Are the Iran strikes a good idea?

“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier,” President Trump announced in his second inaugural. “That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier.”

By launching an unnecessary and illegal war against Iran, Trump has forever undermined this goal. The Iranian regime is many things — evil, dictatorial, murderous, even dangerous. But it’s hardly an “imminent threat” justifying preventive war.

In fact, the Iranian regime is weaker today than it has been in decades. Its economy is in shambles due to decades of sanctions and mismanagement. Its proxies have been decimated by Israel in two years of unrelenting war. Its allies in Syria and elsewhere have been ousted. Its nuclear program was buried deep underground by the June 2025 Israeli-U.S. bombing campaign. Its missile stockpiles have dwindled, and its production facilities have been damaged. Its air force cannot fly, its army cannot move beyond its borders, and its navy is little more than a coastal fleet.

The strikes may have killed the supreme leader. But that alone will not end the regime or free the Iranian people. Instead, the country and region will be left in chaos on ruins — with the United States now bearing responsibility for their future.

Ivo Daalder is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center.

The Iranian regime is responsible for the deaths of many hundreds of Americans. The regime’s rallying cry is “Death to America.” It attacks and undermines U.S. allies across the Middle East, from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain to Jordan to Israel, while seeking to develop missile and nuclear capabilities that threaten the United States. President Trump’s decision to launch Operation Epic Fury, in partnership with Israel, will go down in history not only as a good idea but as one of the most consequential decisions in military history.

Iran is not Iraq or Afghanistan. It has a highly educated opposition dedicated to building an open, democratic and moderate future. If the U.S. and Israel stay the course and create the conditions for the ayatollahs’ downfall, this would be a major blow to Iran’s entire axis of terror, and a major step forward in shaping a stable, secure and prosperous Middle East.

Asher Fredman is a visiting fellow in the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation.

The Iran strikes are extraordinarily risky and carry a high degree of uncertainty, especially when considering second and third-order effects. By opting for the most ambitious set of objectives centered on regime change along with destroying Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile and military capabilities, the Trump administration has set a high bar for what can only be described as a war of choice, not necessity. Iran’s capabilities are certainly eroded, but given the existential stakes, Tehran has already demonstrated its willingness to lash out recklessly, regardless of the consequences. If Iran is going down, it will seek to take others with it. It will subject the region to destabilizing retaliation, potentially striking energy infrastructure and other economic targets and possibly impeding traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with significant impacts on oil prices. The Iran strikes may prove to be a costly gamble by the United States — not a good thing.

Mona Yacoubian is director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The problem with U.S. policy toward Iran for two decades has been its lack of credibility: American presidents claimed they would destroy Iran’s nuclear program but allowed North Korea and Iran both to make consequential advances. President Trump shattered that hesitance with last year’s strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure, showing the U.S. had been overly concerned about retaliation. The current military campaign responds to no imminent threat but a tempting opportunity to kill Iran’s political and military leadership. The intelligence and military prowess of both Israel and the U.S. should leave a profound effect on allies and enemies both, as should the collapse of support for Iran from Russia or China. And rather than complicate American and Israeli relations with the Gulf states, Iran’s retaliation against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman could create a united front that further constrains Tehran. The outstanding concern should be whether Iran’s forces of domestic repression can survive subsequent attacks to dominate the country’s emergent political order.

Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Donald Trump promised in his 2025 inauguration speech that the success of his presidency would be measured “perhaps most importantly [by] the wars we never get into.” Yet the self-styled “President of Peace” has managed, in just over a year, to wage military conflicts in at least seven countries, including Iran.

These attacks are badly misguided. (Some literally so: Early reports suggest that U.S. strikes have, among other things, mistakenly hit a girls’ elementary school, killing scores of children.) Most fundamentally, they violate international law: Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States. Don’t care about that? These strikes also violate U.S. law. The Constitution gives Congress — not the president — the power to declare war, and Congress never authorized this use of force.

In addition, the strikes epitomize strategic folly. As Trump himself observed in 2016, “Our current strategy of nation-building and regime-change is a proven, absolute failure.” You can kill or kidnap a nation’s repressive leaders, but you cannot democratize or stabilize a country of 90 million people with airstrikes alone. Far more likely, the attack will further destabilize an already volatile region, putting U.S. service members, American allies and global shipping, trade and energy supplies at risk — while endangering millions of civilians in Iran and beyond.

Most troubling, the Iran strikes cement a pattern that was already becoming clear. After the U.S. attack on Venezuela and threats directed at Greenland, the territory of a NATO ally, the United States increasingly resembles the very kind of rogue state it once condemned. A nuclear superpower that places itself above law, loyalty, facts and prudence invites a dangerous reframing: Other nations may begin to view the United States the same way international law has traditionally viewed pirates — as hostis humani generis, the enemy of all mankind.

Rosa Brooks is the Scott K. Ginsburg Chair in Law and Policy at Georgetown University Law Center.

We have neither a clear objective nor a post-war plan for success. Without these two critical elements, we have made the calculation that the unknown is better than the status quo. The known included the ongoing negotiations with Iran, a reasonable assessment of its uranium production, a detailed, proven understanding of its leadership’s mindset and likely actions, and necessary intel about the regime’s Achilles’ heels. In short, our knowledge was deep, clear and steady. With the assassination of Khamenei (who was very old and sick anyway and could have died at any time), we have a strategic knowledge deficit. Should the regime last, we do not know how new leaders will lead, assess, respond. Should the regime collapse completely, we are betting things will go our way or, worse, imagining and hoping that they will. Hope is not a strategy, as we have learned the hard way — and we have rarely imagined the follow-on effects of things we set in motion with regime change (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya).

Which brings us to soft power. To pick the timing of a military attack (hard power) on one’s enemy is a luxury. Under such circumstances, one would naturally expect a well-thought-through, multi-pronged plan for a soft-power war alongside it. Once the air attacks stop, what will be happening on the ground? Have lessons from the Arab Spring been learned? Does the administration believe that the youth, who are unarmed, will have the power to build a new Iran and defeat those who still have weapons? Do we believe that bad actors will not be working to reset the nation ideologically? The truth is, we do not have any idea how the vacuum will be filled, and we almost certainly have not done the necessary work to give all the anticipated scenarios the best chance of landing where we need them to. With the administration having decimated America’s usual levers of soft power like USAID, what is the plan to influence the emotions of the people, or even a method to bring new leaders who will be favorable to America’s bottom line? Sen. Lindsey Graham has been sporting a hat that reads “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN.” Time will tell if the slogan inspires a new, better chapter or, more likely, disintegrates like his cheap-looking hat.

Farah Pandith is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Muhammad Ali Global Peace Laureate.

President Trump’s decision to enter the U.S. into another Middle East war was wrong, needless, reckless and blatantly unlawful. This war puts American service members and civilians at risk, which is why the majority of Americans do not support this intervention. It also puts American allies and partners in serious danger, and it is no surprise that so many of them have quickly condemned the action.

The Islamic Republic is, without a doubt, a brutal regime with a great deal of blood on its hands. But the use of military force should only be employed when absolutely necessary, and only with explicit consent from Congress. Trump did not secure this consent — he didn’t even seek it. He has failed to provide evidence of an urgent threat in the region that would justify intervention in Iran, let alone present a coherent plan for defending Americans or advancing U.S. interests.

Trump’s voters have made clear that they do not support regime change wars — and we know now he lied to them during the campaign when he promised peace. Regime change wars do not end well for the United States. And, as is always the case, it will be the working people of America who will bear the burden and pay the price.

Damian Murphy is senior vice president of national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress.

Despite the early successes of the campaign, the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran represent a riskier proposition than the Trump administration’s other recent uses of force. To be sure, America and Israel vastly overmatch a weakened Iran’s military capabilities. And the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is an important breakthrough.

But even if the war itself appears to be another “cakewalk,” what comes next is highly uncertain. President Trump’s remarks confirm what’s clear from the operation itself: Regime change remains the responsibility of Iranians. They’ll face a well-armed and well-entrenched system, defeated but determined to cling to power. Trump may be indifferent; a battered Islamic Republic may sound as appealing as regime change. Given all this, any path to a stable new Iran will likely be long and messy, with sustained security challenges for Iranians and their neighbors — and by extension Washington — for the foreseeable future.

Suzanne Maloney is the vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, where her research focuses on Iran and Persian Gulf energy.