On Feb. 28, the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in Operation Epic Fury, a campaign that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and prompted retaliatory strikes on American allies in the region.
To understand more, even as events on the ground rapidly shift, The Dartmouth interviewed five professors: Middle Eastern politics professor Ezzedine Fishere; government professor Jeffrey Friedman, who specializes in international relations; government professor Brendan Nyhan, who specializes in presidential politics; sociology professor Misagh Parsa, who specializes in Iranian politics; and government professor William Wohlforth, who specializes in international security.
What led the U.S. to act now?
WW: Number one, the assessment of Israel and the United States is that Iran is weaker since strikes last June. Two, President Trump warned the regime that when it went ahead and killed many thousands of protesters that he had to do something. And third, we know there was a relentless pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu to do this. Marco Rubio even mentioned that if Israel was going to do it, it made sense for the United States to go along.
BN: Donald Trump is obviously being much more aggressive about the use of military power in his second term in the White House. But why now? It’s not entirely clear. We struck the nuclear facilities not that long ago, and we’re told at the time that they’d been obliterated — obviously, they have not been. At the same time, the Iranian regime has always been a problem for U.S. governments and the world. Previous governments have considered different options but in every case rejected this kind of a strike.
Who will lead Iran next? Is regime change possible without U.S. or Israeli troop deployment?
EF: I don’t think you can create a democracy by force, but regime change is possible from the air. What we’re seeing is unprecedented because they’re going after the pillars of the regime.
MP: Internal regime change would need to paralyze the economic structure through strikes. Markets and factories would shut down while protestors take over the streets. At that point, the Revolutionary Guard is not sufficient to repress them, so the state would have to bring the army out. Once they notice that the whole city is in the streets protesting, soldiers say: “Look at that. My mom is there. My dad is there.” They’re not going to shoot those people, so they have to defect. That is basically a collapse of the regime.
How is this intervention contextualized within the scope of Trump’s foreign policy?
JF: Intelligence and precision strike capabilities make it possible for the United States and Israel to inflict severe costs on other states leaders, including killing them. Other presidents have been reticent to conduct these kinds of strikes in ways that break international laws and erode international norms. We’re seeing very clearly that this policy, which had a pretty decisive short term impact in Venezuela, is anything but that right now in Iran.
BN: This intervention contradicts his promise of fewer foreign wars. Still, presidents change their minds. That’s not unusual, but it’s notable how the administration almost didn’t bother to offer a public campaign for why intervention was necessary now. Before the war in Iraq, the Bush administration offered an extensive case for why a military intervention was justified. This administration didn’t bother to do so in advance, and afterward has said relatively little and the rationales being offered keep changing.
What do you see as the likely outcomes of this conflict?
WW: It’s a huge gamble. Otto Von Bismarck called going to war “the roll of the iron dice,” as you never know how they’re going to come out. But this one is an extraordinary act of risk taking —there’s the possibility of escalation, the possibility of Iran descending into chaos.
EF: I see three possible outcomes: people from the regime make a deal, including a reorientation of policy, of how the regime works, and so on — as occurred in Venezuela. Or enemies of the regime manage to push the regime into a degree of chaos, like Syria. Or you have a civil war and collapse, like Libya. Of those options, I don’t think anybody knows what will happen, but the decision makers in Washington and Israel decided that any of the three options is better than the current status quo.
The Trump administration did not consult most European allies or most of Congress before the strikes. How will the U.S.’ actions affect its relationship with our allies externally and Congress, internally?
JF: The War Powers Act says presidents have wide ranging latitude to deploy military force, at least within a period of 60 days. Congress has complained about this for several decades, and the fact of the matter is they’ve never done anything about it. On the other hand, allies do not like it when the United States deploys military power without their input. In the long run, these costs could be substantial. For example, if the United States needs to take actions in Taiwan, it could be very difficult to get allies in Europe — who are half a world away from China — to be willing to confront Beijing.
What role did Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel play in the decision to get involved? What implications does this joint-action have on the U.S.’ relationship with Israel, considering that domestic support for Israel has decreased since the war in Gaza began?
BN: Netanyahu is very effective at getting Trump to do what he wants. One has to worry in the current administration that the decision-making process is not functioning adequately. The result could be strategic miscalculations and being vulnerable to being pushed around when we’re ostensibly the global superpower.
EF: Netanyahu has a focus on Iran, but a different prime minister would probably end up in the same position. Now, the U.S. decided to intervene with Israel, despite the decrease in support for Israel in the U.S. Ironically, that might be a kind of a reset of the relationship, because the U.S. decided that Israel as an ally is pretty militarily reliable.
In a New York Times interview in January, Trump said he prefers to operate on “his own morals” rather than international law. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a March 2 press conference that the U.S. is acting “all on our terms” without “stupid rules of engagement.” How do the administration’s actions in Iran fit within international law?
WW: There’s the law on the use of force: when is it appropriate to use force? Then there’s the law on the conduct of war, so-called international humanitarian law. Israel probably was fine on the first front in terms of the fact that it suffered such an attack. But on the international humanitarian law front, not good. Here we have now the attack with the 165 school girls getting killed. There’s a rule where you’re allowed to strike first under a set of key conditions. None of those conditions were fulfilled, so the idea that somehow Iran was in a clear and imminent threat to which we had no other response than force was not there.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
