Summary: The article reports that the initial phase of the U.S.-led conflict with Iran is challenging President Trump's assumption that military force can be used with minimal American casualties and economic disruption. Early costs include American deaths, attacks on allies, market volatility, rising fuel prices, and significant military expenditures. Officials warn the conflict may escalate and become prolonged, contrasting with the administration's previous quick-strike operations.
Main Topics Covered:
1. The early costs and consequences of the U.S. conflict with Iran.
2. The contrast between this conflict and the Trump administration's previous, lower-cost military operations.
3. Warnings about the potential for the conflict to escalate into a prolonged war.
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News Analysis
Trump Wants a Quick Victory in Iran. But the War May Be Costly.
The opening days of the conflict are challenging the idea that President Trump can project force abroad while safeguarding American lives and the economy.
As President Trump uses U.S. military force overseas, his calculation has been that he can launch military operations with the loss of few American lives and minimal disruption to the economy.
The opening days of the war in Iran are challenging that assumption.
Already, six Americans have been killed. Gulf allies are under attack. The stock market wobbled. Gas prices are rising. The U.S. military is spending, by some estimates, hundreds of millions of dollars per day. In Iran, an airstrike on a girls’ elementary school killed 175 people, according to local health officials and Iranian state media, and the Trump administration says it is investigating who was responsible.
While no American ground troops have yet been sent to Iranian soil, the administration has not ruled out deploying soldiers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday suggested the conflict might not be short.
“We are accelerating, not decelerating,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters, adding: “More bombers and more fighters are arriving just today.”
Before deciding to launch a new round of missile strikes against Iran that began on Saturday, Mr. Trump had been emboldened by what his administration views as a string of swift military achievements.
Under Mr. Trump’s leadership, the U.S. military captured Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in a quickly executed operation; struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in a surprise attack; targeted Houthi militants in Yemen; blew up a succession of suspected drug boats in the Caribbean; and bombed targets in Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia as part of counterterrorism operations.
All of these operations were carried out quickly, and, in the administration’s view, successfully, with little cost to American lives or treasure.
But the war the United States and Israel have launched against Iran runs the risk of spiraling beyond those quick-strike operations, particularly if the administration further involves itself in regime change.
Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, warned Wednesday that the United States was headed down the same path of endless war that he had seen firsthand and that Mr. Trump had campaigned against.
“After trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, decades of endless conflict, my entire adult life, a quarter of a century of American war — here we go again,” Mr. Crow said. “Donald Trump campaigned on ending the wars because he knew at the time that that’s what Americans wanted, and still want, and yet, here we go again.”
Mr. Trump has encouraged the people of Iran to “take over” their country, but he has not backed any specific entity to lead the fight against the government.
Since launching strikes, Mr. Trump has spoken with Kurdish leaders, but has not agreed to any plan to arm them to overthrow the Iranian government, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Wednesday.
“Trump is an individual who likes low costs and flashy what he considers victories,” said Jon Hoffman, a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute. “Everything that I hear from folks in the administration and around the administration is that after Maduro, he was running high. He felt untouchable in many ways. But this is fundamentally different than Venezuela. The costs are already racking up.”
Mr. Hoffman pointed to the dead U.S. service members and the spiking of oil and natural gas prices.
“I think Europe’s natural gas prices went up about 40 percent, and this is only going to get worse,” he said. “These prices are going to continue to rise.”
Still, Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations who worked for three Republican presidents, including Mr. Trump, said he believed there were many benefits to killing the leaders of Iran and dismantling the country’s military capacity.
“The costs so far are the lives lost to American service members,” he said. “The benefits are, I think, enormous. This regime has been trying and sometimes succeeding in killing Americans for more than 40 years.”
Mr. Abrams said that if Mr. Trump declines to send in ground troops, American deaths may remain low. But a decimated Iranian regime, he said, was ultimately in the interests of America and its allies. “Even if regime remnants remain in power, they’ll have no nuclear program, essentially no ballistic missile program and no ability to project power in the region,” he said.
But Mr. Hoffman isn’t so sure, arguing a destabilized Iran could pose a high risk to America and its allies.
“If it really is the plan to start arming ethnic separatist groups and try to Balkanize Iran,” he said, “not only would that be a proxy war at a scale at which the United States has never engaged before in the Middle East, that will impose incredible costs on the region.”
In that scenario, Mr. Hoffman said, “you’re likely talking mass refugee flows, you’re likely talking about time and space for groups like ISIS to start taking a foothold.” He added: “These are groups that just thrive on chaos. You’re opening Pandora’s box.”
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