By Shayndi Raice and Sudarsan Raghavan
JERUSALEM -- After hitting Iran's key nuclear facilities on Saturday, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that "NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!" It is unlikely to be up to him.
U.S. officials have signaled that in their view Saturday's strike was a one-off intervention, and that they now seek de-escalation. Iran has vowed to hit back at American interests. And Israeli leaders have told its citizens to be prepared for a long campaign.
The course of the conflict and whether it is settled on the battlefield or at the negotiating table will hinge on at least two key variables. First, how badly have the U.S. and Israel damaged Iran's nuclear capabilities and, second, will Iran choose to retaliate and how.
If Iran follows through on its promise to target U.S. military bases and other assets in the Middle East, it could spark a broader conflagration -- something President Trump had pledged on the campaign trail to avoid.
Iranian missiles slamming into U.S. installations in Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain or elsewhere would likely prove impossible for Trump to ignore.
Israel has its own agenda, which goes beyond halting Iran's uranium enrichment to eliminating its ballistic missile program and maybe all the way to regime change, something the U.S. says it isn't seeking. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel was "very, very close" to achieving its war aims, the first hint that it could be open to an end to fighting.
"De-escalation will happen when both sides want it," said Phillips O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "It could happen soon if Israel believes it has achieved what it wanted and the Iranians believe further fighting imperils their rule."
The fastest way out of the war is an Iranian surrender, in practice a diplomatic agreement to end uranium enrichment and potentially other curbs on its atomic ambitions. Analysts say it is also the least likely.
Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Sunday that diplomacy has proved useless. The Trump administration, he said, only understands "the language of threat and force, and this is very unfortunate."
Iranian officials may have bought themselves some time Sunday by saying they had minimized the impact from the U.S. strikes to their nuclear program. State media said damage at the key Fordow enrichment facility was limited to the entrance tunnel and that important equipment had been moved out before the bombings. That could reduce the public pressure to retaliate immediately and instead provide the regime room to come up with a plan to deter future U.S. and Israeli strikes.
Yet Iran's military options range from "poor to disastrous," said Ali Vaez, head of the International Crisis Group's Iran project. "It can try to escalate against Israel or the U.S. or U.S. interests in the region, but it is already outgunned by Israel and outmatched by the United States."
A decision by Iran to expand the war by targeting U.S. forces or assets would all but ensure a violent U.S. response that could drag out the fighting and raise the risk of the collapse of the regime.
Iran could symbolically attack U.S. forces in the region, as it did after the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020. President Trump played down those attacks, and the confrontation ended. That scenario could allow the U.S. to stay out of the war, while fighting between Israel and Iran would likely continue.
Or Iran could choose to raise the stakes by targeting more substantive Western targets in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, along with strategic locations in Israel and strikes in oil-producing regions of the Persian Gulf or U.S. embassies in the region. Such a scenario could drag the U.S. into a full-blown regional war.
Iran could also try to close the Strait of Hormuz -- a transit chokepoint for a quarter of the world's oil -- by attacking ships or laying mines.
The goal would be to trigger an oil-supply crisis, a surge in prices and a drop in global stock markets in a bet that would pressure Persian Gulf nations and the U.S. to broker a diplomatic outcome. It is a risky course that could instead lead to more U.S. attacks that could threaten the durability of the regime in Tehran.
But Iran could also pursue a middle ground where it focuses its response almost entirely on Israel, maintaining the current tit-for-tat fighting between the two, risking a war of attrition with no clear off-ramp.
"We will bomb, they will bomb. We are stuck in some sort of carousel," said Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.
The U.S. would be less likely to continue to fight Iran if the strikes are limited to Israel or only target U.S. assets symbolically. Trump halted a U.S. bombing campaign of Houthi-held Yemen in May that allowed the group to continue to strike Israel.
Such a scenario would see continued Israeli strikes on Iran and Iranian ballistic missiles launched at Israel. Israel would have the upper hand militarily, but could find itself unable to land a decisive blow, leading to an inconclusive end to the war.
Weakened, but intact, the Iranian regime could rush toward a nuclear weapon in secret.
But it could also buy time for events on the ground to change on their own. If a nuclear weapon is delayed by years, that could allow for events to outrun the threat. Israeli airstrikes destroyed nuclear reactors in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, setting back nuclear-weapons programs for Saddam Hussein and the Assad regime. Both were ultimately toppled before they could revive those efforts.
Iran's ability to respond is limited by the weakening of its so-called axis of resistance, a group of allied militias around the region that have focused on attacking Israel.
Hamas, which launched the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that began the war, is fighting for its life in Gaza. Iran's most powerful ally, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, is unable or unwilling to come to its defense. Other allies such as the Houthis have shown only limited ability to inflict damage on Israel, and could face another U.S. bombing campaign if they were to target U.S. assets.
Israel's campaign has wiped out Iran's air defenses, giving its air force largely free rein in Iranian skies. Netanyahu said the air force destroyed half of Iran's missile launchers and has been targeting its arsenal of ballistic missiles.
Iran can probably launch missiles at Israel for another month, said Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of Alma Research and Education Center, a think tank in Israel. The "worst case" scenario, according to Zehavi, is "that Iran will not surrender and continue the war to exhaust us by launching a few missiles every day to prevent us returning to routine."
In the end, the Israelis' air superiority will make it impossible for Iran to outlast them, said Danny Orbach, a military historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "Israel can bomb them at its pleasure and nobody is actually coming to their aid."
Despite Iran's response, Israel may not want to wrap up the fighting until its war goals have been achieved. Those include not only the end of Iran's ability to enrich uranium, but also the destruction of its ballistic missile arsenal. Israel estimates Iran began the war with 2,500 ballistic missiles and was set to reach 8,000 within two years.
U.S. officials, including Trump, have said the American strikes "obliterated" Iran's nuclear facilities. But it will take longer for a real assessment to be made. It is also possible that Iran has moved some of its enriched uranium to other sites, making it more difficult to know the full extent of their capabilities.
Some members of the Iranian parliament have called for an immediate withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Hard-line factions in the government view building nuclear weapons as the best path forward to regain regional influence and deter threats from Israel and now the U.S.
Some Israeli officials have suggested that the goal of the operation is regime change -- a move that could destabilize the country and the region. If Israel pursues that option, it could also extend the war.
For that reason alone, Iran will be under pressure to respond militarily, said O'Brien.
"For Iran, you would think the chance to make at least one significant retaliation blow against the U.S. and Israel is imperative," he said. "One imagines that maintaining its rule is now the number one priority of the regime."
Write to Shayndi Raice at Shayndi.Raice@wsj.com and Sudarsan Raghavan at sudarsan.raghavan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 22, 2025 16:49 ET (20:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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