Two weeks after the illegal attacks launched by the United States and Israel against Iran, there is no quick or victorious exit from the conflict for its predecessors. Donald Trump has not been able to repeat in Iran a quick and relatively easy operation like the one at the beginning of the year in Venezuela, where he captured President Nicolás Maduro and subjected his regime to Washington’s orders in a few days.
The US president has not been able or willing to set a date to conclude the offensive against Iran – in which more than 1,300 people have already died, according to local authorities – but with each passing day a solution to the conflict that Trump can sell as a victory becomes more complicated, especially at home.
Unlike the bombings that the US carried out last June against Iranian nuclear facilities, in support of the offensive launched by Israel against its Persian arch-enemy, Trump now has to demonstrate the need and usefulness of the largest US military deployment in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and offer concrete results that justify the economic and human cost for his country (six US soldiers died this week, raising the total of US casualties in the war to 14).
The June 2025 attacks, very limited in time and objective, were presented by his Government as a success, although they did not completely destroy Iran’s atomic facilities. Now, Washington cannot yet say that it has won the war because it has not yet managed to overthrow or subdue the Iranian regime, which continues to respond with drones and missiles throughout the region.
On Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reiterated in a press conference that ending the Iranian nuclear program remains a “fundamental mission” of the joint US-Israeli offensive, despite the fact that in June of last year Trump declared that he had eliminated it. Hegseth said Trump is focused on ending Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons once and for all. That is the pretext that Israel used in June of last year to attack Iran, claiming that it was on the verge of achieving the atomic bomb, and it is the specter that Benjamin Netanyahu has raised for decades to convince his main ally that Iran represents an existential threat, not only for the Jewish State but for the entire world.
Thousands of objectives without a clear plan
Eight months after that first joint offensive, it is not clear that the US and Israel can end the Iranian nuclear program—nor that this is the main objective of their military adventure. Hegseth said Friday that American warplanes, along with Israeli forces, had attacked “15,000 enemy targets” in 15 days of operations, that is, about 1,000 targets per day. A high-sounding figure but not very concrete, since it did not detail what objectives they were or their military and strategic relevance. “We plan to defeat, destroy and disable all of their significant military capabilities at a rate the world has never seen before,” he said without offering further information.
The deadliest and most notorious bombing of the two-week campaign was the one that killed 175 people, most of them school-aged girls. The US denied having any responsibility, at first, and now says it is investigating what happened, but everything indicates that it was one of its lethal Tomahawk missiles that hit the school which, according to The Washington Post, was among the military objectives of the US Army.
For its part, the Israeli Army is carrying out intense daily bombing attacks against Tehran and other parts of the country, which have been directed against the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij (a police force affiliated with the first elite corps), the regime’s infrastructure and “command” centers or energy facilities. Local authorities have reported that the targets are civilians on many occasions; According to the Iranian Red Crescent, 17,000 homes and 4,000 commercial buildings have been damaged.
After bombings against fuel depots this week, the UN warned of the risk to the health of Iranians and to the environment derived from the toxic gases that rose over Tehran. The spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office, Ravina Shamdasani, considered that there are “serious doubts about whether the obligations of proportionality and precaution provided for in international humanitarian law were met,” adding that the places attacked “do not appear to be exclusively for military use.” After the attacks, “acid rain” fell on the capital, which is very harmful to health due to the damage it can cause to the respiratory tract and skin, as warned by the World Health Organization.
Israel’s massive bombings against all types of targets are not surprising, given its actions in the Gaza Strip since 2023 and in Lebanon, in the 2024 offensive and currently — the Arab country is being hit hard and more than 100 children have been killed in less than two weeks. According to several Israeli military and intelligence sources consulted by The Guardian, Israel did not have a plan to end the Iranian regime when it began the war on February 28.
A victory worth 440 kilos of enriched uranium
Former and current members of the Israeli Army and Intelligence told the British newspaper that, if the new Iranian leadership manages to remain in power, the long-term success of the military campaign will depend on the fate of the approximately 440 kilos of enriched uranium that Iran possesses, according to reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Joab Rosenberg, former deputy director of the research division of Israeli Military Intelligence, considered that “the worst result of this war would be a declaration of victory like the one in June 2025, leaving the Iranian regime weak and with 450 kilos of enriched uranium in its hands.”
The prestigious magazine The Economist is even more blunt when it comes to defining a successful end to Trump and Netanyahu’s war enterprise: “If the war unleashed by the United States and Israel on February 28 can be considered a success, even if it is limited, it will undoubtedly have to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions for years and, ideally, forever.” In an opinion article, he presents three options for the US to end Iran’s nuclear program.
The first option—backed by some in Israel, according to The Economist—is to send special forces to seize the enriched uranium, which would require “a massive multi-day occupation, with a specialized assault force protected by more than 1,000 soldiers and constant air support.” “Although it is feasible, it is demanding and risky,” he points out, and the US has already lost the factor of surprise and the uranium could be in several places, so some of it could be left behind.
A second option is to “bomb Iran whenever it poses a threat,” although “this war has shown how costly that would be,” says The Economist. The Pentagon has estimated that it has spent $11.3 billion (€9.7 billion) in the first six days. He rules out this option because American voters would surely reject going to war on a regular basis and “strategists would not want to be caught up in the Middle East when their attention is focused on China.”
The third and only viable option for The Economist is an agreement with the regime to end its nuclear program – which returns the US and Iran to the pre-war situation, that is, to the negotiating table. “It is a difficult option: Mr. Khamenei could reject the agreement. The regime could accept it and then renege on it. And yet it is still the best option. Iran is exhausted after the bombings. To rebuild its economy it needs the sanctions to be lifted. In exchange, he could be willing to reach a permanent agreement as part of a ceasefire, in which the regime accepts the end of enrichment, the supervision of its nuclear program and the dilution or elimination of highly enriched uranium,” he concludes.
However, that option would not please Netanyahu, who did everything possible to ensure that Trump did not continue negotiating with Iran and opted for military means, thus fulfilling the dream that ‘Bibi’ had been pursuing for decades. For the Israeli, war is a way to stay in power and improve his popularity, but for the American it can be very expensive politically. While in Israel the majority of citizens support the offensive launched by their government against Iran – because they conceive it as a direct threat – in the US the current war enjoys very little popular support (below the Iraq war of 2003), according to several surveys.
That unpopularity and the great economic impact are leading Trump’s advisers to try to get the president to send a clear message about the limited duration and scope of the war, according to the Reuters agency.
A Trump adviser and two other people close to those talks told Reuters that economic advisers and administration officials have warned the Republican that an oil crisis and rising gasoline prices could further reduce support for the war in the United States. According to these sources, Trump’s political advisers, including his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, are presenting to the president the political repercussions of the economic impact and urging Trump to narrow the definition of victory and say publicly that the operation is limited and almost finished.
According to Reuters sources, some of his top advisers have advised him to work towards an outcome of the conflict that he can call a triumph, at least from a military point of view, even if much of the Iranian regime remains in power, with a badly damaged nuclear program.
So far, Trump has not sent the kind of message he would like to see from his advisers. This Saturday, he once again boasted about military achievements and rejected a negotiated solution: “The media that spread fake news hate reporting on how well the United States Army has done against Iran, which is totally defeated and wants an agreement, but not an agreement that I would accept!”, he wrote on his Truth Social network.