Trump's Iran Stratigy
The Limits of Pressure: Trump's Iran Strategy Why Trump Seeks to Contain Iran, Not Topple It Why it works: By Wahab Raofi Amid renewed saber-rattling between Washington and Tehran, a familiar pattern of threat and counter-threat dominates the headlines. Yet beneath the rhetoric lies a more consequential question: is the United States prepared to attack Iran to overthrow its regime? Shaped by the searing failures of recent history, the answer is almost certainly no. The Trump administration's strategy is not one of regime change but of coercive restraint —a concerted effort to cripple Iran's capacity to project power and pursue nuclear weapons without triggering another open-ended war. This represents a fundamental departure from the ideological nation-building projects that defined earlier U.S. interventions. The 2003 invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush culminated in the disastrous policy of de-Ba’athification, which dismantled the Iraqi state itsel...