As President Trump tries to thread the middle ground between neoconservative interventionism (Bush), the collapse of deterrence over red lines in Syria (Obama), and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan (Biden), fears of a quagmire loom large. Will the collapse of the Ayatollah’s regime, begun in earnest after 10/7, intensified over last summer’s 12-Day War of June 2025, and now accelerated substantially over the weekend, open a window for Iranian civil society waiting in the wings to coalesce around a more like-minded Iranian government? Or will American attention span for a largely unpopular war falter, exposing the war and its aims to a gamble not unlike Putin’s in Ukraine, or Xi Jinping’s over Taiwan: America’s adversaries simply care more about winning these conflicts and will therefore outlast whatever interest the American electorate has in victory.
The idea of an “Achilles Trap”, whereby both sides in a conflict fundamentally misunderstand the motivations and limits of the other, is no minor problem. On these assumptions hangs a great deal of whether attacks on Iran launched by Israel and the U.S. meet the criteria of jus ad bellum (law in going to war) criteria of just war theory. These include:
- Thatthe war and its aims may be considered likely to succeed;
- That military action is proportionally appropriate where other tactics such as economic sanctions could otherwise achieve our goals;
- That the strikes in Iran have been constituted by the proper authority, and;
- That the strikes on Iran can meaningfully be thought of as a last resort.
A great deal also depends on the jus ad bellum criteria of right intention, which seems to have expanded from stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons to the aim of regime change. There are any number of war aims that could be defended on both the grounds of just war and international law which, though not identical, overlap significantly. These include:
- The degradation of Iran’s terror network, which came into renewed focus after 10/7.
- The removal of Iran’s ballistic missile capability, which represents a real and substantive danger to both America and allies in the Middle East and beyond.
- The once and for all elimination of Iranian nuclear enrichment.
- A humanitarian case for the removal of a regime that has slaughtered its own citizens in the tens of thousands, evidenced only short months ago.
The goal of regime change encompasses all of these and so it’s certainly a preferred outcome from the perspective of the American national interest. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that different rationales are offered by different spokespersons, and even by the President himself. Clarity on the aims of war is a matter of legality, but also justice. Confusion and miscalculation can also be very dangerous, laying the groundwork for mission creep.
While the President is notoriously indifferent to international law, his framing of EPIC FURY in defensive terms suggests he expects to be and remain on side of American domestic law. Whether American lawmakers or the international community find those arguments, such as they are, persuasive is another matter. But the aim of a just war is the achievement of a just peace, and the call for Iranians to rise up and take back their state from its extremist revolutionaries seems to be directed towards just that.
Yet there are precious few examples of regime change happening by air power alone. We are all learning a great deal about the operations in Serbia and Kosovo in the late 90s; whether the success of those operations at removing Slobodan Milošević is the exception that proves the rule remains to be seen. The problem, as I see it, is that if regime change is the stated goal, then the means the Trump administration is utilizing are not proportional to that end. In other words, the United States will likely need to bring more force to bear, not less, in order to achieve regime change. Not only does this seem unlikely, but if the necessary force were deployed it would mean that the President would be in the unenviable position of going to Congress to ask for longer-term support in a year in which his MAGA coalition is going to the midterms.
So, the means available to the President unilaterally are short, sharp, and composed largely of aerial and naval bombardment, but the stated ends will almost certainly require more than that. Many of the above goals could be justified as war aims entirely on their own, and I suspect some version of them will be accomplished and after the conclusion of EPIC FURY could be declared a kind of victory on the basis of some of these being achieved. However, if we take the aim of this war on its own terms, it seems unlikely that the means committed can achieve the declared ends, and that is in fact the measure of a just war.
As it stands, the goal of regime change to more democratic-minded leadership depends partially on American and Israeli air power, but much more so on hopes and prayers that once—and if—the regime collapses, we will witness a replay of Serbia, not Syria. The Iranians certainly have my hopes and my prayers for that.