President
Just a few weeks ago, US forces seized Venezuela’s president in a surprise raid from the air. By ordering strikes on Iran that killed Ayatollah
The message is unmistakable: almost no foreign adversary should feel secure, except perhaps those that have nuclear weapons. Rivals will have to contend with a more unrestrained form of American power — one that critics say shatters the legal restraints Washington has long demanded of others.
“Trump seems to have become worryingly ready to use the formidable US military power and to do so without any constraint — guided only by what he sees as US interests at any particular moment,” former UK National Security Adviser
As Iranian missiles struck targets across the Gulf, shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — the conduit for about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and gas — slowed sharply, with shipping lines suspending transits, insurers reassessing risk and some shipowners invoking war clauses to cancel voyages. Airlines grounded flights across the region, including global hubs like Dubai, with operations remaining restricted Monday.
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Brent crude, already up nearly 20% this year, was trading around $77 a barrel after surging the most in four years Sunday. Bloomberg Economics
“When you look at past presidents, we’ve never used our full power,” said Jack Devine, former director of operations at the CIA. “We were at the more collegial 7 level. Trump has amped it up to the 10 level. This is a brave new world.”
While Trump has urged protesters who flooded Iran’s streets in December and January to seize power, there is no sign that the administration has laid the groundwork for an opposition movement to quickly rise up against the regime.
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Some Iranians took to the streets to celebrate the death of a leader blamed for decades of repression, but large crowds also mourned him and there was no immediate sign of the broad uprising that Trump has called for in recent days.
Monday, Trump didn’t include regime change among the goals of the operation, citing instead the destruction of Iran’s missiles and navy, as well as preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons and funding terrorism outside its borders. He vowed to continue attacks as long as needed.
“We projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that,” Trump said at a White House event. “Whatever the time is, it’s OK. Whatever it takes.”
Three US fighter jets crashed after being mistakenly shot by Kuwaiti air defenses, but the crews were able to eject from the planes.
Israeli Prime Minister
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Trump didn’t rule out deploying ground troops “if they were necessary,” the New York Post reported Monday. On Sunday, he told the New York Times that some of the Iranian leaders his administration had identified as possible interlocutors for talks had been killed in the initial attacks. Iran’s security chief
“Decapitation in theory could mean regime change — but in fact it may just mean you have decapitated the individual, and you stick with the regime,” said
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Domestically, Trump’s aggressive foreign policy is a risky gamble for a president who ran against foreign wars and has done little to build public support for the operation. The escalation comes months before midterm elections where his Republican party is likely to lose ground, according to polls, as voters focus on the high cost of living.
Trump is attempting a realignment of US foreign policy as radical as George W. Bush’s after Sept. 11 — but without the galvanizing shock that unified public and political opinion in 2001. There is no comparable national consensus this time. Opposition within Congress is sharper, with almost no public support for another open-ended foreign conflict.
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Only one in four Americans approves of the US strikes that killed Khamenei, while about half — including one in four Republicans — say Trump is too willing to use military force, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Sunday.
“I don’t care about polling,” Trump told the New York Post Monday. “I have to do the right thing.”
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Trump allies immediately cast the operation as a historic success. “My mind is racing with the thought that the murderous Ayatollah’s regime in Iran will soon be no more,” Sen.
Critics see it differently.
“Trump is clearly an imperialist president. He’s clearly someone who is infatuated with his own power in terms of being able to deploy our military,” New Jersey Democratic Senator
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The latest attacks go far beyond last year’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It killed Khamenei, the man who’d dominated Iranian politics for more than three decades, and wiped out senior security figures around him, leaving the Islamic Republic facing a sudden succession crisis.
In Venezuela, President
Trump has suggested Cuba could be among his next targets, as well. So far, tighter sanctions and energy pressure have deepened hardship but have yet to produce political change.
In Iran, the stakes are higher. Iranian missiles have struck Israeli and US sites across the Gulf and more than half a dozen countries including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The lesson for other leaders is stark.
For some, a credible nuclear deterrent — and careful management of Washington — can be a powerful form of protection, as
A change of regime in Tehran would be a setback to Moscow and Beijing, which have cultivated ties with the Islamic Republic. Putin called the killing of Khamenei a “cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law.”
Chinese Foreign Minister
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Some Chinese analysts suggest a prolonged US entanglement in the Middle East could ultimately absorb American attention and distract Washington from Asia. “If the Iranian government can function normally and quickly establish an alternative,” said Li Weijian, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, “it will not have a significant impact on China’s various interests.”
Meanwhile, India’s
US allies are worried. French President
Privately, two senior European officials said allies have come to see Trump’s confrontational approach as the new normal, even if they disagree with it. They said few in Europe will miss leaders like Maduro or Khamenei, but lament the methods used to remove them.
“Europeans are very nervous about the way that both the US and Israel appeared to be a law unto themselves, that we didn’t even bother to inform our European allies,” said
For oil markets, the impact of Trump’s policies this year has already been dramatic. Venezuelan barrels that once moved on shadow-fleet tankers under heavy sanctions are now flowing to buyers in the US, Europe and India on Western ships.
How the attack on Iran reshapes global supply remains unclear. Traders tracked developments by the hour over the weekend as shipments through Hormuz slowed, three vessels were reportedly attacked in the region and explosions were reported on Iran’s Kharg Island export hub, though details were still emerging. Publicly, Tehran said it doesn’t intend to close the Strait but that hasn’t reassured shippers, who are staying away.
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Across the Gulf, airlines halted operations in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi, stranding tens of thousands of passengers and disrupting one of the world’s busiest aviation corridors and financial centers.
Tehran’s network of proxies could also further widen the fight, though Israel has destroyed much of their military capability in recent years. The Houthis have already threatened to resume attacks on US-linked shipping in the Red Sea.
Trump is pursuing his foreign policy goals far more aggressively than in his first term, driven in part by a desire to define his legacy and a realization that his military powers are far vaster than he’d previously understood, according to a senior European diplomat in Washington, who asked not to be identified discussing policy.
“What you’ve seen is a president who’s very much willing to use force, albeit not for lengthy operations on the ground, but is certainly willing to use force, and that those forces have been absolutely extraordinary in executing the operations he has directed,” said
Critics say Trump’s approach is shaped by a 24-hour news cycle and his own short attention span. US voters, too, have shown little patience for drawn-out campaigns. Instead of calibrated pressure over months or years, he has so far opted for swift, high-impact blows.
His approach isn’t entirely new. After Sept. 11, targeted killing became a pillar of American counterterrorism. President
Trump pushed the envelope in his first term. In 2020, he ordered the strike that killed Iranian General
“Trump is the first US president to say he does not ‘need’ international law and to act openly and brazenly in disregard of it,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.
US adventurism in the Middle East has a long record of unintended consequences that sometimes take years to play out — from the 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran that ultimately helped stoke the 1979 Islamic Revolution to the chaos that allowed Islamic State to seize territory across Iraq and Syria a decade after the US invasion of Iraq.
A collapse of central authority in Tehran could spark a refugee wave that reverberates in Europe and beyond — as Syria’s did a decade ago, reshaping politics across the continent — while drawing neighboring states and global powers deeper into the conflict.
“In this kind of situation, the individual who emerges is often the one who has the most guys with the most guns and the willingness to use them in a really hard-edged manner,” said Petraeus.
The US has targeted foreign leaders before, usually in the shadows — from the 1973 coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile to assassination plots against Cuba’s
What sets Trump’s latest action apart is its openness: a publicly acknowledged military campaign aimed at the apex of a sovereign government that few believe posed an imminent threat the US.
“You have a country that is the most powerful country on the planet, running around, knocking over regimes without a lot of warning, without a lot of rationale,” said Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East program at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank that’s skeptical about the use of force. There’s “very little if any planning for what happens afterwards,” she said.
(Updates with market data, Trump comments from sixth paragraph.)
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