Donald Trump reacted with characteristic bluntness this week when he responded to an attempted attack on US warships by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis. He pointed the finger of blame squarely at Tehran and threatened “dire consequences” if the Red Sea onslaught was not halted.
Just what those consequences might be is a question that can be added to a lengthening list of geo-political uncertainties generated by the US President.
But there can be little doubt that the White House has a renewed and determined focus on the Islamic Republic. The temperature of Washington’s rhetoric towards Iran was raised further on Tuesday in a read-out of the phone call between Mr Trump and Mr Putin in which the US pointedly highlighted an apparent agreement between the two leaders that “Iran should never be in a position to destroy Israel”. The American desire to put Iran on notice that it is towards the top of Mr Trump’s ponderings could not have been clearer.
Mr Trump is no stranger to ramping up of tensions with Tehran. In 2015, he unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear deal signed with in Iran by world powers, including the UK, and embarked on a regime of enhanced sanctions – part of a so-called “maximum pressure” strategy aimed persuading Iran to abandon once and for all its atomic weapon ambitions.
Since his return to the Oval Office, Mr Trump has imposed fresh sanctions on Iran and signalled a renewed willingness to confront Tehran and its Yemeni proxies when American forces last weekend launched a wide-ranging attack on 30 Houthi targets. The Houthi-controlled health ministry said the attacks had killed 53 people.
Mr Trump’s return to more bellicose language toward Iran thereby comes amid evidence of a shift in tone and substance from Washington towards its adversaries in the Middle East – with military action increasingly to the fore. Alongside its bombardment of Houthi targets, Washington is widely thought to have given its approval to the Israeli government’s decision to resume its confrontation with Hamas on Monday night with one of the heaviest and deadliest air attacks of the war in Gaza.
The question is whether Iran – either directly or indirectly – could be next on Mr Trump’s list of armed confrontation.
As one Western security source put it: “The maximum pressure approach is absolutely back in town. I think we are a way off strikes but certainly the hawks in Washington can smell blood in the water as far as Iran is concerned.”
The immediate answer is that Washington is blaming Tehran for a resurgence in threats by the Houthis, the Shia rebel movement which controls the more populous areas of northern Yemen, to target civilian shipping in the Red Sea. Since October 2023, the Houthis have launched 145 attacks on civilian vessels, causing significant disruption to global shipping routes and supply chains.
On Saturday, US forces launched the Trump administration’s first major air strikes in the Middle East, hitting 50 locations across nine Yemeni provinces.
The Institute for the Study of War, a non-profit US think-tank, said the attack differed from those launched under the Biden White House by killing Houthi leaders, including a drone specialist and the bodyguard of the group’s supreme leader, Abdulmalik al Houthi.
When the Houthis, who are widely regarded by western intelligence to receive extensive help from Tehran in the shape of weaponry, radar equipment and intelligence, attempted to hit back at the US aircraft carrier USS Truman – launching three ineffectual drone and missile attacks in recent days – the response was one of presidential fury.
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Senior Iranian officials have tried in recent days to distance themselves from Houthi actions. Major General Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed that Iran does not determine the “national or operational policies” of its proxies”.
But such blandishments fall on deaf ears in the Oval Office. Writing on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Mr Trump said: “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN. And IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”
Experts underlined that Mr Trump’s words should also be seen in the wider context of ongoing tensions over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and Iran’s diminished but nonetheless extant status as Israel’s most implacable foe in the Middle East.
Against this backdrop, Washington is now embarked on a campaign of showing its Middle Eastern allies, among them Saudi Arabia, that it is applying fresh vigour in its longstanding campaign to degrade Iran and its so-called of “Axis of Resistance”, the grouping of proxies which includes the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia which suffered a humiliating defeat to Israel last year.
The result is a heightened risk of a direct clash between the US and Tehran. Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran specialist at the Atlantic Council think-tank, said: “Given the existing high tensions, these attacks—especially if the United States suspects that Iran is continuing to assist the Houthis— bring Tehran and Washington closer to confrontation.”
Peace overtures in a deepening nuclear stand-off
For all displeasure at Tehran’s ongoing sponsorship of conflict throughout the Middle East, the Trump administration has hitherto made a show of its desire to test Iran willingness to engage with talks over its nuclear programme.
Less than a fortnight ago the US president sent a letter to the Islamic Republic’s leadership suggesting they strike a “deal”. Iran has long denied that it wishes to obtain atomic weapons but both the US and Israel insist it is closer than ever to making that ambition a reality – an outcome which neither country, nor indeed the West, is willing to countenance.
As Mr Trump put it earlier this month: “I said [to Tehran] I hope you’re going to negotiate, because it’s going to be a lot better for Iran. We’re down to final strokes with Iran. That’s going to be an interesting time. And we’ll see what happens. But we’re down to the final moments. Final moments. Can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”
It is this mixture of carrot and stick which is currently being played out while the West is otherwise largely preoccupied with events in Ukraine and the threat posed to European peace by Russia, which has in turn allied itself firmly with Tehran.
A complicating ingredient in this heady geo-political cocktail is the position of Russia itself.
The White House read-out of Tuesday’s call between between Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin, ostensibly about plotting a path to a ceasefire in Ukraine, included an apparent agreement by the two leaders that “Iran should never be in a position to destroy Israel”. This was widely interpreted as a shared view in Washington and Moscow, which is a close ally of Iran, that Tehran should not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.
The statement, which perhaps significantly did not appear in the Kremlin’s analysis of the leaders’ call, sits awkwardly with Moscow’s own complaints – made as recently as last Friday following a meeting with Chinese and Iranian representatives – that America should suspend its “unlawful” sanctions against Tehran and recommence nuclear talks.
Whether the rapprochement between Mr Trump and Mr Putin amounts to a signal from the Kremlin that it would at least not intervene directly in an American or Israeli strike in Iranian nuclear facilities remains to be seen.
Analysts say the result is a combustible combination of Iran experiencing a moment of strategic regional weakness following the defeat of Hezbollah and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and emboldened leaderships in Israel and America potential willing to embrace – or at least acquiesce in – armed force.
Speaking before the latest confrontations, Darya Dolzikova, a specialist in Iran’s nuclear programme at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “The threat of a military response against the Iranian nuclear programme has long suffered from a credibility issue. Now, with Israel having clearly demonstrated a willingness to escalate in the region and against Iranian territory directly, and with a Trump administration that can reasonably be expected to be less scrupulous than its predecessor in holding Israel back should it decide to strike Iranian nuclear sites, the threat is more credible than it has been in a long time.”
In a regime not easily given to moments of self-criticism and introspection, the words of General Barhouz Arbati when summing up the effects of the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria were significant. Speaking in January, the IRGC commander said: “We were badly defeated, we suffered a fatal blow and it’s very difficult.”
Certainly, Iran has suffered a succession of potent defeats in the last 12 months in its long-term strategy to surround Israel with its proxy militias and secure regional hegemony over Middle Eastern rivals such as Saudi Arabia.
John Raines, a conflict expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: “Iran may continue to snarl, but it has been repulsed as a force in the Levant and, largely, defanged.”
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At the same time, much of the history of modernday Iran has been to absorb a succession of external set-backs, ranging from the ruinous war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980s through to oil price crashes, and rebuild its alliances to, by hook or by crook, retain its position as a regional power.
Dr Renad Mansour, an expert at the Chatham House think-tank, said: “Historically, Iran has gone through these military shocks throughout the years, as well as political shocks, economic shocks, sanctions all the time, and it’s always managed, for survival reasons, to reconfigure again. Our assumption is this will happen again.”
Such a scenario is possible because after decades in the geo-political wilderness Iran has built a spiders web of informal networks and trade links which allow it to find new proxies as others fade away, and identify pragmatic alliances.
It is a case in point that Iran has played a crucial role in helping to arm Russia at crucial points in its invasion of Ukraine, in effect selling to Moscow its delta-winged Shahed drones which are now made under licence by the Kremlin on Russian soil and used to bombard Ukrainian towns and cities. Moscow is likely to show its gratitude, with Western intelligence increasingly concerned that it might even lend its nuclear expertise to Tehran.
Could the US attack Iran and if so when?
Officials in Washington have indicated that an attack on Iran is not imminent. Even the hyper-active Trump administration is widely regarded as lacking the bandwidth to launch, or support, an assault on Tehran at the same time as pursuing its campaign of trade tariffs and engaging with the Kremlin over an end to the war in Ukraine.
But there is at the same time an agreement between hawkish elements in America and Israel that 2025 will prove a crucial year for dealing with the question of Iran’s nuclear programme amid claims that it would now only require a short period – perhaps as little as a month – for Tehran to enrich uranium to the 90 per cent level required for an atomic weapon.
In such a context, Israel has previously indicated its willingness to launch its own attack on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, which are deliberately dispersed across the country and hidden where possible in bunkers and mountains.
But it remains the case that the success of such an operation would be likely to rely America to take part, not least because it alone possesses some of the weaponry – such as the most advanced bunker-busting bombs – needed to penetrate Iranian defences. It is a position underlined by Israeli public opinion, where polling shows that support for an attack on Iran rises from 33 per cent when conducted by Israel alone to 53 per cent when supported by Washington.
Military experts point out that such an operation would be lengthy – spanning several days of constant air operations – and fraught with danger, especially if Iran manages to rebuild its air defences after they were damaged in Israeli attacks last October. The regional ramifications are also profound, with the Islamic Republic repeatedly warning that it would consider such an assault to untie its hands in terms of retaliation.
For now, it seems, the preference in the White House is for a diplomatic solution. Speaking earlier this month, Dan Shapiro, the former US ambassador to Israel under Barack Obama and the first Trump administration, told a security conference in Tel Aviv: “Trump’s agreement will require the full dismantling of nuclear capabilities, the transfer of enriched materials, and transparency in declaring all nuclear sites.”
But as the Western security source put it: “I think everyone is on the same page as that being the sort of deal that would be needed. The trouble is getting Iran to agree to it and in the current context I’m afraid that seems highly unlikely.”
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