Donald Trump Could Strike Iran’s Nuclear Program Again
Key Points and Summary – Following the recent Israeli strikes that failed to completely destroy Iran’s nuclear program, US President Donald Trump faces a critical decision with three potential paths.
-He could continue a “long war in the shadows” with covert action, but this has already proven insufficient.
-He could pursue a new, Trump-branded diplomatic deal, but this risks being seen as weakness by his base.
-The third and most likely option, appealing to Trump’s instinct for dominance, is direct and overwhelming US military escalation to cripple Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
-While risky, this path aligns with his desire to send an unmistakable message and avoid looking reactive.
Iran Survived. Now Trump Has to Choose Between Glory and Grind
So it turns out Iran’s nuclear program is still very much intact.
Despite Israel’s unprecedented and audacious strikes—despite all the intelligence triumphs, bunker-busting munitions, and precision-guided raids—Fordow wasn’t flattened, Natanz wasn’t vaporized, and Iran’s breakout capability wasn’t eliminated.
Slowed? Marginally.
Deterred? Only temporarily.
Destroyed? Absolutely not.
That’s the sober reality, and it leaves the United States—more specifically, Donald Trump—at a critical decision point.
For a president who thrives on dominating the headlines and appearing stronger than his adversaries, the revelation that Iran’s nuclear program is still very much alive and kicking is an unacceptable optic. In Trump’s political cosmology, survival is synonymous with defiance. And Iran’s survival of what was supposed to be a decapitating strike—albeit carried out by Israel—will not sit well. The world is now watching not just Iran, but Trump.
His response must satisfy the demands of spectacle, reassert American strength, and reestablish deterrence. And it must do so quickly.
He has three options. Each has its logic, its appeal, and its pitfalls. Each aligns—imperfectly—with different aspects of Trump’s worldview. But only one of them is likely to satisfy the visceral instincts of the man who ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani and tore up the JCPOA with the flourish of a signature.
The first is the default option: continue the long war in the shadows. This means more cyberattacks, more mysterious explosions, more sabotage of Iranian facilities and supply chains. It means leaning on Israeli and Gulf Arab intelligence services to do what the U.S. cannot be seen to do directly. It’s a strategy that offers the illusion of control and the comfort of deniability. No boots on the ground. No body bags. Just flickers of destruction behind enemy lines.
But it’s a strategy that has already failed. Iran has survived wave after wave of cyber strikes, assassinations of top nuclear scientists, and covert operations designed to stall its nuclear progress. And still, it endures. Still, it enriches uranium. Still, it disperses and deepens its infrastructure. This is a regime that learns, adapts, and hardens. Every strike that doesn’t succeed in rolling back the program entirely only teaches Tehran how to defend itself better the next time. And every moment the program remains functional is a signal to Iran’s enemies—and to the world—that pressure alone won’t stop it.
For Trump, this slow grind in the shadows lacks everything he values: it’s not visible, not dramatic, not final. It doesn’t play well on television or social media. It doesn’t give him a moment he can frame as a decisive win. In fact, it makes him look reactive—content to tinker at the margins while Iran races forward. That alone makes it deeply unsatisfying.
The second path is diplomatic—at least on the surface. Trump could announce his intention to negotiate a “better deal” than the one President Obama delivered and President Biden tried to resurrect. Not a JCPOA redux, but something new: a Trump-branded agreement with tougher restrictions, broader scope, and tighter inspections. Something that, with typical bravado, he could call “the deal of the century.”
This is not as far-fetched as it may sound. Trump likes deals. He believes in personal diplomacy. He once stood on the border of North and South Korea, smiling for the cameras alongside Kim Jong-un. He has long believed that his own instincts, his transactional savvy, and his unpredictability can bring adversaries to heel. A deal with Iran would allow him to say he succeeded where Obama failed, where Biden flailed, and where warhawks only escalated.
But it would also mean negotiating with a regime that just survived an assassination campaign and an Israeli air blitz—and sees its nuclear program as the ultimate insurance policy. Tehran has no reason to come to the table unless it believes Trump will escalate unless he is appeased. That might give him some leverage. But it also might trigger the exact kind of brinkmanship that leads straight to war.
There’s also the domestic angle. Trump’s political base, and much of the Republican foreign policy establishment, have no appetite for negotiations with the Islamic Republic. Any whiff of concession—any freeze or rollback in exchange for sanctions relief—will be denounced as weakness. And Trump, for all his talk of making deals, is exquisitely sensitive to accusations that he’s being played. The risk of diplomatic failure is high—and the political cost of that failure even higher. This would be a bold move, but also an unnatural one for a president who loathes looking like he backed down.
Which leaves the third option: escalation. Not limited strikes. Not covert sabotage. Not economic pressure. Real, visible, overwhelming military force—American, not just Israeli. A sustained campaign of airstrikes designed to cripple Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, destroy its known enrichment sites, annihilate its command and control systems, and decapitate the leadership of the IRGC. This would be a direct attack on the core of Iran’s military-nuclear complex. And it would send the kind of message Trump instinctively favors: that the United States, under his leadership, will not tolerate defiance, delay, or duplicity.
This is the path that appeals most to Trump’s temperament. He doesn’t want a war. But he does want dominance. He doesn’t want to occupy Tehran—but he wants to shatter the idea that the regime can thumb its nose at Washington and survive. The Soleimani strike in 2020 was not a prelude to occupation. It was a message, delivered with a drone-fired hellfire missile. It said: cross the line, and you die. Iran got the message. For a while.
Now, Trump might feel the need to write that message again, in capital letters, this time across Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
The risks, of course, are staggering. Iran would retaliate. That’s not a possibility—it’s a certainty. U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria would come under fire. Hezbollah could open a second front against Israel. The Houthis could launch a wave of missile and drone strikes against Saudi and Emirati oil infrastructure. The Strait of Hormuz could be choked off, sending global energy prices soaring. Iran’s proxies, dormant or restrained in recent months, would be unleashed with a vengeance.
And yet, for Trump, these risks may seem manageable—or at least worth taking. Because nothing, in his political calculus, is more dangerous than looking weak. He has repeatedly mocked his predecessors for failing to “finish the job.” He has framed Biden’s Iran policy as naive, impotent, and dangerous. He has promised again and again to keep America strong, decisive, and feared. Walking away now, or offering a diplomatic fig leaf, would shatter that image.
And for Trump, image is everything.
Trump Seems Likely to Attack Iran Again
So what does Trump do now? He may toy with all three approaches. He may ramp up covert attacks. He may float the idea of talks. But ultimately, if the past is any guide, the path he’s most likely to choose is the one that gives him maximum visibility, maximum leverage, and maximum control of the narrative. That means a strike—bigger than before, louder than before, unmistakable in its intent.
Not because he’s bloodthirsty. Not because he wants regime change. But because he knows that in the high-stakes theater of international power, survival is a statement—and Iran has just made one. Trump now has to answer it.
And history suggests that when backed into a corner, his instinct isn’t to retreat or negotiate.
It’s to hit back—harder.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.
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