It is difficult to imagine any other Republican or Democratic president taking such a risk to hit Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The Middle East is understandably viewed as the graveyard of presidential misadventures, where an administration’s good polls crash and sometimes do not revive.
Jimmy Carter’s reelection hopes blew up after the failed 1980 rescue mission. Iran-Contra almost sabotaged Ronald Reagan. Even the successful 1991 Gulf War ended poorly with the survival of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the ensuing endless “no fly zones”—and a repudiated George H.W. Bush in 1992.
George W. Bush lost control of his presidency with the devolution of the 2003 Iraq War. Joe Biden’s polls never recovered from the skedaddle from Kabul, Afghanistan.
But President Donald Trump’s limited and defined agenda—and unpredictability—was a different operation and may avoid such a fate.