From isolationist to warmonger: Will Trump's Iran bet pay off?

The US President may have the political leeway to keep fighting but how long that window lasts will depend on Tehran's response.

- James Politi, Lauren Fedor and Steff Chavez

President Donald Trump took the biggest gamble of his combined 4½ years in the White House on the night of June 21 in striking Iran and joining Israel's war against the Islamic republic. His primary wager is that Iran and its proxies in the Middle East have been so weakened that the US President can cast his intervention as both limited and successful. It is also a bet that a cowed Tehran will swiftly seek a settlement rather than retaliating.

If Mr Trump is right, he will have achieved a goal of US foreign policy spanning multiple administrations - the elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat - and done so at relatively low cost. But the move carries the huge risk of inflaming the Middle East further - jeopardising the security of the US and Israel, and backfiring on a president who had vowed not to draw America into new global conflicts.

"It all depends on how the Iranian regime reacts - and it's not clear what the regime's capacities and will are at this point. (But) Iran's network across the region remains operationally lethal, and it is able to sow more instability and terror if it chooses to do so," said Mr Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think-tank.

Mr Trump had spent much of his 2024 presidential campaign arguing that he would be a peacemaker in his second term, solving global conflicts rather than fomenting new ones. But the President, under pressure from Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saw a strike against Iran both as an opportunity to be seized, and a chance to secure a legacy as a leader willing to wield American military power.