In his speech on Wednesday night, President Donald Trump reiterated the aims of the campaign against Iran. It was clear from his address, and a video message from Secretary of State Marco Rubio a day earlier, that the U.S. intends to finish destroying the arsenal and factories of Iran’s ballistic missile program.
The U.S. will mostly end Iranian subsidies to its Arab terrorist proxies, while eliminating Iran’s air defenses, air force, navy, and ballistic missiles and drones. The intent is to so weaken Iran militarily and economically that it will be nearly impossible for it to produce a nuclear weapon. An implicit, though not articulated, objective is the humiliation of the theocracy to the point that it no longer can disrupt and terrify the Middle East, while emboldening popular internal resistance that will blame the ayatollahs for bringing ruin upon the entire country.
Trump vowed to hit Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks before ending the war. The remaining U.S. challenges of the campaign in this concluding period are as much political as military, and entail the following considerations.
