CNN: U.S. Strike On Iran Could Open Pandora's Box
- 19.06.2025, 11:48
- 5,814
Trump is increasingly leaning toward using U.S. military assets.
US President Donald Trump may be increasingly inclined to join Israel's war on Iran with a possible strike on the country's key nuclear facilities and is becoming disillusioned with the idea of a diplomatic solution. But experts say a U.S. attack on Iran could drag the country into a quagmire even more complicated than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It could be a protracted standoff that could last the entirety of Trump's presidency and involve heavy American casualties and resources at Israel's behest. That's what CNN told Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, D.C.
Reporters' sources say Trump is increasingly leaning toward using U.S. military assets to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.
"Any U.S. attack would lead to a full-scale Iranian attack on U.S. bases in the region and a full-scale war between the United States and Iran," Parsi said.
He said Tehran may not be able to withstand a prolonged fight with the United States, but it would not be an easy war for Washington either.
"Iran is a very large country, which means that the United States will have to hit a very large number of targets to deprive Iran of the opportunity to strike back," the expert said, noting that there is no broad support for a war with Iran in Trump's entourage right now.
A US strike on Iran would open a "Pandora's box" and "likely consume the rest of Trump's presidency," said Ellie Gueranmaye, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
"Once you open that Pandora's box, we have no idea where things are going to go. Trump has backed away from the brink of war with Iran in the past, he can do it again," Geranmayeh noted.
Direct U.S. intervention in the conflict could lead Iran to activate what's left of its proxies in Iraq, Yemen and Syria, who have previously attacked U.S. targets in the region.
Knowing that it cannot directly win a conflict with Israel and the United States, experts say Tehran may try to engage in a war of attrition, in which it would try to deplete its adversary's will or ability to fight in a protracted and destructive conflict, as it did during Saddam Hussein's decade-long war with Iraq in the 1980s.
"The Iranian strategy may end up being to just try to hold out, strike back as hard as possible and hope that Trump will eventually try to end the war, as he did in Yemen," Parsi said.
After months of strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, the U.S. reached a cease-fire agreement with the group in May, to Israel's disappointment.
"This is how Tehran sees the chance to win such a war of attrition. In the long term, capitalizing on its offensive capabilities and depleting the combined U.S.-Israeli defense forces. U.S. entry into this war is a bad and costly decision for everyone," Abdolrasul Divsallar, a senior fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, wrote in X.
According to U.S. media, there is no complete agreement within Trump's team on the idea of a U.S. strike on Iran. CBS television channel, citing five sources, said the day before that Trump is considering the option of direct participation of the US military in Israel's operation against Iran. Preliminarily, they could join strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
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