As Israel strikes Iran, many wonder if the US will deepen its involvement

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — As Israeli strikes kill top Iranian generals, take out air defenses and damage nuclear sites, many wonder if President Donald Trump will deepen U.S. involvement in the conflict.

Trump has long railed against what he refers to as the “stupid, endless wars” waged by his predecessors, including in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. helped overthrow governments. But with Iran’s government looking increasingly fragile, if the U.S. does get involved, its strikes could help severely damage the country’s nuclear program or even end its 4-decade-old theocracy.

“I may do it, I may not do it,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters at the White House about whether he has decided to order a U.S. strike. “I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

But the recent history of U.S. attempts to remake the Middle East by force is one of costly blunders and colossal failures — and there are plenty of hard-earned lessons for anyone who wants to try it again.

Initial success is often fleeting

U.S. special forces and Afghan allies drove the Taliban from power and chased Osama bin Laden into Pakistan within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. American tanks rolled into Baghdad weeks after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Both wars went on for years.

The Taliban waged a tenacious insurgency for two decades and swept back into power as the U.S. beat a chaotic retreat in 2021. The overthrow of Saddam plunged Iraq into chaos, with Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias battling each other and U.S. forces.

Israel may succeed in taking out Iran’s air defenses, ballistic missiles and much of its nuclear program. But that would still leave hundreds of thousands in the military, the Revolutionary Guard and forces known as the Basij, who played a key role in quashing waves of anti-government protests in recent years.

Ground forces are key but do not guarantee success

Airstrikes have never been enough on their own.

Take Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, for example. His forces withstood a seven-month NATO air campaign in 2011 before rebels fighting city by city eventually cornered and killed him.

There are currently no insurgent groups in Iran capable of taking on the Revolutionary Guard, and it’s hard to imagine Israeli or U.S. forces launching a ground invasion of a mountainous country of some 80 million people that is about four times as big as Iraq.

A split in Iran’s own security forces would furnish a ready-made insurgency, but it would also likely tip the country into civil war.

There’s also the question of how ordinary Iranians would respond.

Protests in recent years show that many Iranians believe their government is corrupt and repressive, and would welcome its demise. But the last time a foreign power attacked Iran — the Iraqi invasion of 1980 — people rallied around the flag.

At the moment, many appear to be lying low or leaving the capital.

Be wary of exiled opposition groups

Some of the biggest cheerleaders for the U.S. invasion of Iraq were exiled opposition figures, many of whom had left the country decades before. When they returned, essentially on the back of U.S. tanks, they were marginalized by local armed groups more loyal to Iran.

There are several large Iranian opposition groups based abroad, but they are not united and it’s unclear how much support any of them has inside the country.

The closest thing to a unifying opposition figure is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the theocracy to power. But many Iranians have bitter memories of repression under the shah, and others might reject Pahlavi over his outreach to Israel, especially if he tries to ride to power on the back of a foreign invasion.

Chaos is practically guaranteed

In Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya — and in Syria and Yemen after their 2011 uprisings — a familiar pattern emerged when governments were overthrown or seriously weakened.

Armed groups emerged with competing agendas. Neighboring countries backed local proxies. Weapons flowed in and large numbers of civilians fled. The fighting in some places boiled over into full-blown civil war, and ever more violent extremist groups sprouted from the chaos.

When it was all over, Saddam had been replaced by a corrupt and often dysfunctional government at least as friendly to Iran as it was to the U.S. Gadhafi was replaced by myriad militias, many allied with foreign powers. The Taliban were replaced by the Taliban.