Trump is waffling on Iran strikes. Here are four possible reasons why.

Is help really “on its way” for Iran’s protesters?

That’s what President Donald Trump promised in a Truth Social post earlier this week, adding that “Iranians Patriots” should “KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!”

Trump first threatened that the US was “locked and loaded” to launch strikes on Iran if it continued killing protesters on January 2, and has followed up with several similar messages. Since then, the protests have spread throughout the country, and the regime’s crackdown has become ever more brutal. Though a nationwide internet blackout has made it difficult to get an accurate picture of what’s happening on the ground in Iran, human rights groups believe between 12,000 and 20,000 people may have been killed. At the very least, we can say that the regime defied Trump’s warning to stop killing protesters. 

Just a few days ago, Trump appeared to be leaning toward military strikes on Iranian regime targets, the first since the US bombed Iranian nuclear targets last June. But Trump appeared more equivocal on Wednesday, saying that “important sources” had told him that the killing in Iran had ended and that the United States would “watch and see” if it resumed. The governments of Israel and several Arab countries have reportedly urged Trump to refrain from strikes for now, fearing regional retaliation.

The violence may be subsiding, though that may be less because the regime is worried about US intervention than because the protest movement itself is starting to subside amid the unprecedentedly violent crackdown and communications blackout. Still, the situation is fluid —the movement and the backlash could resume, and influential hawks in the administration and on Capitol Hill are still calling for Trump to take stronger action. 

While Trump has approached this crisis in his own unique way, the basic dilemma of whether the US should use military force to stop mass killing overseas is one that has repeatedly vexed his predecessors. It isn’t called a “problem from hell” for nothing. As he and his Cabinet weigh their next steps, they face difficult questions about the purpose and efficacy of American intervention that more traditional administrations have dealt with as well.

Will the US lose credibility?

Trump’s national security team is reportedly split on whether to intervene, but according to a report from CNN, the president himself feels obligated to follow through on his threats in order to preserve his own credibility. “Part of it is that he has now set a red line, and he feels he needs to do something,” one official said. 

Whenever “red lines” are invoked in national security debates in Washington now, the precedent being implicitly or explicitly referred to is Barack Obama’s decision in 2013 not to take military action against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. In that case, Assad had killed hundreds of civilians with chemical weapons, which Obama had previously said was a “red line” that would change his calculus about whether to intervene in the conflict. 

Trump repeatedly referred to Obama’s failure to enforce the “red line,” blaming it for subsequent atrocities by the Assad regime during his first term. Though Trump had not been particularly enthusiastic about intervention in Syria during his first campaign, even suggesting the US should ally with Assad to fight ISIS, he ultimately decided to order the airstrikes that Obama had refused to in response to a chemical weapons attack in 2018.

Political scientists may be skeptical about the idea of “credibility” in foreign policy, but Trump clearly believes in the importance of not showing weakness on the world stage. 

Will it create new problems?

If Syria in 2013 is the Obama precedent that may sway Trump toward intervention, Libya in 2011 is the one that may sway him against. 

In that case, a US-led NATO air campaign intervened to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya in order to prevent what many feared was an impending massacre by dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi’s forces in the opposition-held city of Benghazi. The intervention led to the overthrow of Qaddafi’s despotic regime, but also Libya’s descent into civil war and chaos, contributing to armed conflict and mass migration throughout North Africa. Most Americans remember “Benghazi” today not for the averted massacre in 2011, but for the attack that killed two US diplomats and two CIA contractors in the city the following year. 

Could US intervention bring down the 46-year-old Islamic Republic? If so, what would come next? Iran hawks argue that the country’s widespread opposition and strong civil society signal that it’s unlikely to go the way of Libya or Iraq and devolve into civil war. 

Perhaps that’s true. But the president has also consistently shown skepticism toward nation-building missions throughout both his terms, even as he’s intervened in multiple countries. In his military actions thus far, whether the Syria strikes and assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in his first term or the campaigns in Yemen, Iran, and Venezuela in this one, Trump has managed to defy critics who warned he was leading the US into a quagmire, always managing — so far at least — to keep the intervention limited and the backlash manageable. 

But that brings up the next issue: 

Would it accomplish anything? 

Though none of them turned into a new Iraq or Vietnam, it’s less clear whether Trump’s military actions accomplished their goals. Assad continued to massacre civilians, including with chemical weapons, after Trump’s two missile strikes in 2017 and 2018. The Houthis continued to attack ships transiting the Red Sea as well as Israel, even after the US concluded “Operation Rough Rider” last spring. Iran’s nuclear program was damaged, but not “obliterated” by “Operation Midnight Hammer.”

As the Israeli analyst Daniel Citrinowicz suggests, the US finds itself in something of a strategic dilemma when it comes to its Iran response. “There is no credible path to achieving a decisive strategic outcome through a limited, short-duration campaign,” he writes. A short, sharp, low-risk operation wouldn’t do much to weaken the regime or help the opposition. A long, costly campaign would raise the risk of blowback and would probably get little public support in the US. A poll by Quinnipiac University this month found 70 percent of voters opposed military action to support protestors in Iran.

Trump has rarely been modest about claiming victory when it’s politically convenient, regardless of the facts on the ground. See, for instance, the ever-expanding list of wars he claims to have ended. On the other hand, if the violence in Iran is already subsiding, it may give him an out to claim a win without actually intervening. 

This doesn’t do all that much for the people of Iran, however. 

Will it create false hope?

On Feb. 15, 1991, about a month into Operation Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush gave a speech saying that one way for the bloodshed to stop would be for “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” 

The message was broadcast into Iraq along with leaflets calling for civilians and soldiers to rise up. Thousands of Iraqis responded to the call, including mutinying soldiers, Shiites in the south of the country, and Kurds in the North who had long hoped for the downfall of the regime and launched a mass uprising. But if these Iraqis were hoping the US would support their uprising, they were disappointed. The US declared a ceasefire two weeks later. Though forbidden from flying fixed-wing aircraft under the terms of the ceasefire, Saddam Hussein’s forces used helicopters to put down the uprising. Despite this violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of his deal with the US, the Bush administration chose not to intervene, fearing the complete collapse of Iraq or “another Vietnam” that would draw in US troops. As many as 60,000 Shias and 20,000 Kurds were killed in the ensuing crackdown. 

It’s difficult to know to what extent Trump’s calls for Iranians to “keep protesting” motivated Iranians to take to the streets in spite of the risk of death or imprisonment. The economic and political grievances motivating this uprising predate Trump, and the marches began without any encouragement from him. But it’s also clear that while democracy promotion and nation-building are not major priorities for this administration, Trump saw the protests as a useful means of weakening an adversary.

This story is still far from over, and intervention is still very much on the table, but the people of Iran would hardly be the first to rise up against an autocratic government with America’s encouragement, only to find that there are limits to how far the US was actually willing to go to support them.