The Trump administration’s ultimate goals for the war in Iran, never well defined from the start, appear narrow.
When President Donald Trump once talked eagerly about the change of government and insisted that he should take a role in elect the next supreme leader of Iran – same as Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela – The White House now says the war will continue until Iran “can no longer pose a military threat.”
When will that be? Trump says he’ll “feel it in my bones.”
This should be obvious from the start. Air campaign almost never overthrow the government and there is little desire in Washington to send ground troops. Some officials in the United States and Israel still hope hope that the situation for a change of government may have been created. Some point to the example of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević, whose regime survived a NATO air campaign in 1999 but, severely weakened, collapsed in a popular uprising a year later. Ethnic minorities like the Kurds can also take advantage of Tehran’s weakness push for more freedomdividing government control if not overthrowing it entirely.
But for now, those are theoretical scenarios. Trump has ever it is said that they were informed by the advisers in recent days that the ruling regime of Iran is not about to fall, despite being beaten, and it is possible to emerge from this war weaker, but more difficult.
Advocates of the US-Israel strategy arguing is still worthwhile: that the destruction of most of Iran’s missile programs, navy, air defense, and nuclear program will make it more difficult for the regime to project power throughout the region.
The problem is what happens when the war is over. Military and nuclear capabilities can be rolled back, but they can also be rebuilt. Trump himself has referred to the threat from Iran’s nuclear program that he claimed to have “eradicated” less than a year ago as (correctly or not) the main reason he started a bigger war now.
Worse, the rest of the Islamic Republic may have a higher tolerance for risk and a greater incentive to impose future costs on adversaries. If it keeps its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, Iran will have it more incentive than ever to rush to the nuclear bomb instead of engaging in fruitless conversations. It will certainly try to rebuild its ballistic missile program. Its ability to disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz has revealed a dangerous new capability it will seek to strengthen.
“Iran does not want to be one of these countries where the US and Israel take military action based on a Google Calendar reminder every six months,” said Ali Vaez, head of the Iran program at the international crisis group. “Believe that that is the death of 1000 cuts.”
All of this could lead to another military response from Israel and the United States, who would be afraid of losing their footing rule over weak Iranespecially if Iran appeared to revive its crippled nuclear program.
That leaves us with an admittedly awkward situation: That the war in Iran is just the first of many wars.
“Cutting the grass”: A military metaphor that can explain the Iran conflict
In the United States, the prospect of an indefinite and far-flung war with Iran is likely to unsettle Trump’s critics on the left and right alike. The White House is already pushing back against the idea that the country is entering “perpetual war” with dark and indefinite goals.
In Israel, though, the idea of a long-term war against regional threats is already well established. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has already suggested that after the war, they may change what he calls “implementation policy”.
There is a more colloquial name for this strategy: “to cut the grass.”
The original word is derived from the influential word article by Israeli defense analysts Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir published shortly after Israel’s six-week war in Gaza in 2014. The article argued that instead of engaging in a protracted Iraq-style counter-insurgency campaign in hopes of eliminating Hamas, Israel could keep the group in check with occasional short engagements. “Israel only needs to ‘mow the grass’ from time to time to destroy the enemy’s capabilities,” they wrote.
That model collapsed badly on October 7, 2023, when the army was caught off guard by a surprise attack by Hamas in southern Israel, which was followed by the kind of protracted, costly war that the strategy was meant to avoid.
In an interview with Vox this week, Shamir, a former adviser in Israel’s current prime minister’s office and the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said this was not because the strategy was flawed, but because it was poorly executed, by the Israeli government. failure to track The increase in the power of Hamas. “All we had was haphazard mowing,” he said.
Israel has also used the idea of ”mowing the grass” outside the Palestinian territories, for example in attacks against Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria known as “campaign between wars” from the year 2022 to 2024. Following October 7, there was a major upheaval in Israel’s attacks against Iran-backed groups in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. regional grass cutting strategy.
The difference this time is that a different strategy is being used against the nation of Iran itself, rather than the operation of a proxy group on the soil of another country.
Shamir said that while regime change is still a pipe dream for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is happy to repair the damage being done by the US and Israel now, and will continue to campaign for as long as Trump allows.
“Every day that goes by that Trump doesn’t stop this is pure gain” for Israel, Shamir said. “Every day you lower the capacity more and more.
The “mowing the lawn” style may be a troubling prospect for anti-war Americans, but it also has critics among Iran hawks, who hope the current war will lead to the overthrow of the government and a democratic future for the country.
“It’s a very expensive option and I would say it’s one we shouldn’t agree to,” said Behnam Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, a think tank that advocates for government change. “The longer you stay in a state of violence, the less likely you are to retain the people you need to push for a better post-Islamic Iran.”
Will the grass grow back?
As Shamir notes, the obstacle to this strategy is the White House’s tolerance for war.
For years, US presidents – much to the dismay of the Israeli government – rejected Israeli requests to take direct action against Iran. Now, Trump has broken precedent: the United States and Israel are attacking Iran directly and—for the first time—the militaries of the two countries are fighting side by side. Israel is clearly eager to take full advantage of this moment in Iran with Lebanon. But that time may not last.
Trump has shown that he is surprised with the severity of Iran’s retaliation against the Arab Gulf states and the resulting impact of the conflict on energy prices. He is now considering the risky options of reopening the Strait of Hormuz; a change from a president who has so far repeatedly defied critics who warned his military involvement would lead to chaos.
Even if Israel is willing to do all this again in six months, it is far from certain that Trump would manage it, let alone another president. “After a long time, your politics do not look good for Israel,” Shamir said.
But even a future U.S. leader who opposes the current war, or who supported earlier efforts to get closer to Iran, may find himself caught up in the logic of “cutting the grass.” No president is comfortable with the idea of a nuclear Iran; even if they blame the previous regime for stoking tensions and cutting diplomacy, they may find themselves under pressure to act again if the Islamic Republic appears to be embarking on a weapons program.
For hawks in the United States and Israel, however, Iran being off balance indefinitely and failing to adequately protect itself from future retaliation may be the best thing about regime change. That shows the outcome of this war can only set the stage for the next one.
