Indestructible Iran: What does D.C. want from Tehran? Regime change, total collapse, or a deal?

by Joaquin Flores,Strategic Culture:

Trump’s “crazy antics” on Truth Social, legacy media interviews, and in press sprays, vacillating between talk of peace but then the next sentence making threats to destroy the entire civilization, leaves the public wondering what his actual aims are. Trump is great at manipulating the press, and even manipulating oil markets. Even the Iranians have been able to make some coin off of this, which already adds a strange dimension. Is this all just the art of the deal?

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So what does the United States actually want from Iran? Is the objective to force regime change, to weaken Iran into fragmentation or state failure, or to eventually bring it into a controlled “normalization” where limited economic and diplomatic relations become possible under American terms?

We should absolutely pay attention to what Trump is saying, but only if we know how to read the controlled chaos of his bifurcated and multivoiced messaging, which was the subject of our last piece, “The Madness of King Trump: Decoding 47”. To really understand all the madness meanswe have to understand the realism driving Trump’s position – what we can call the ‘gravity of the situation.’Trump is a hyperreality surfer who riffs on the world of the possible while manipulating mass perceptions around the impossible, but in the end never goes against the hard reality. Reality, however, is not the same as the simulation created through media. This is why “TACO” – Trump Always Chickens Out, which is a good thing.

The current American strategy under the Trump administration appears to be an endgame centered on a negotiated settlement designed to preserve American a degree of power, or more precisely, relevance; but also buy-in. While many opinions abound to the contrary, our hypothesis holds that the application andspectacleof force are not a prelude to Iran’s destruction, but as a mechanism to maintain the U.S. dollar’s involvement in Iran’s energy transactions in the Strait of Hormuz. Even before the start of this conflict, Iran in reality controlled the strait. Trump’s approach is to align American policy with this reality in a profitable way, instead of trying to overturn it (as past models had been based on). This orientation represents a distinct departure from (and is fundamentally predicated upon the failure of) doctrines of regime change or destruction of the present Islamic Republic state.

One thing is clear; it is not in the U.S.’s declarednational security policyto destroy Iran or even to change the regime. Any of the “potential” benefits thatmightcome in the wake of doing either, can be done still the same by negotiating an outcome with the Iranians in power now. And the costs of a protracted military campaign, or the instability created in regime change, are not only too high, but by the Pentagon’s own accounts, not realistic to succeed. Trump surely seems to be using military power against Iran to force them to make a deal. And since the degree of military power Trump actually uses will be a factor in how willing the Iranians are, makes it a balancing act. Too much force, and it triggers Iran’s existential response and there can be no deal. A little bit of force, and a deal is all the more realistic. But why any force at all?

Too little force, and the Likudniks and Atlanticists will notice. And more, no attacks on U.S. bases from Iran –bases Trump has wanted to close anyhow. If Iran uses all it has on Israel, it may trigger Israel’s nuclear option. Too little, and the Likudnik government doesn’t’ experience sufficient pressure from the public and security establishment to end the war. Trying to pull this off frustrates still-existing power centers (colloquially, “the cabal”, or “the blob”) representing Transatlanticist and Likudnik interests in all three regions (the U.S., Europe, and Mideast). So the observed escalation functions as a simulated exhaustion of these bellicose paths; by allowing these scenarios to reach their logical impasse, the Trump administration effectively creates a “controlled burn”, like that used in fire prevention, that preempts their viability in the future regardless of who in the U.S. may eventually hold power. It will take years for Israel and the U.S. to rebuild their stockpiles. This isn’t merely a reversible policy because it creates new facts on the ground that structures a whole new force of irresistible gravity.