What is Trump’s Regional Strategy in the Israel-Iran Crisis?

I

srael’s U.S.-backed intervention in Iran demonstrates Trump’s construction of a foreign policy doctrine that integrates military capacity with diplomatic and psychological strategies, unlike the classic neocon line. This approach is based on a multidimensional balance strategy that avoids unnecessary engagement but does not rule out high-impact intervention when necessary.

The process that began on June 13, 2025 with Israel’s attacks on Iran and ended with the ceasefire announced by U.S. President Donald J. Trump on June 22, after the U.S. targeted three nuclear facilities in Iran, should be seen not only as military tension between the two countries, but also as a strategic threshold that reveals the fundamental axes of Trump’s second-term foreign policy. This intervention is a direct reflection of Trump’s ‘Peace Through Strength’ principle, which he adopted especially during his second term, and is a multi-layered message to the Iranian regime, Israel’s internal political dynamics, and global rivals, particularly China and Russia.

In this context, Trump’s decision to make his first foreign visit in May 2025 to the Gulf countries carries significant messages in many respects. It is noteworthy that Israel was not included in this tour, which covered Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. His repeated references to Iran in his statements in all three countries signaled the approaching conflict. In his speech in Riyadh, Trump criticized past interventionist U.S. foreign policy, particularly the influence of neoconservatives, arguing that regional actors should be given the initiative rather than nation-building. In this context, either limiting Iran’s nuclear program through diplomacy or deterring it through limited use of force, when necessary, formed the basis of Trump’s doctrine.

Iran strategy: Limited diplomacy and controlled military intervention

When the Trump administration began nuclear negotiations with Iran through Oman on April 27, 2025, it adopted a limited and controlled diplomatic timetable, allowing 60 days for negotiations. This 60-day period was not chosen at random. The snapback mechanism included in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will expire in October 2025.

This mechanism would allow the UN Security Council to automatically reimpose sanctions that were adopted between 2006 and 2010 and suspended under the JCPOA, without the veto power of the 4+1 countries (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China and Russia) coming into play, if they were to conclude that Iran’s nuclear program was not peaceful. Trump aimed to use this period as a diplomatic pressure tool to corner Iran.

On the other hand, the basic condition for the negotiations was that Iran completely halt its uranium enrichment activities, meaning that it could not continue enrichment even at a rate of 3.67%. Trump’s firm approach reflected both his need to navigate the neoconservative factions within the Republican Party and his concern that his policies could be seen as echoing the JCPOA of the Obama era.

The report on Iran published by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on May 31 revealed that the available data on Iran’s nuclear program was extremely worrying. The report stated that Iran had not halted its uranium enrichment activities, but rather increased its high-level enrichment capacity, had a large number of centrifuges, and that uranium fuel residues had been detected in certain locations.

This report led to the IAEA’s decision to condemn Iran on June 12, paving the way for the snapback mechanism process. Trump was most likely prioritizing a strategy of exerting new pressure on Iran through European states. This is because, up to this point, he had clearly restrained Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been calling for direct action from the very beginning of the process, from making a military intervention. However, when the 60-day period expired and Iran did not agree to a deal with Trump, this led to Netanyahu being given the green light for a limited operation.

Weakening the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

It is understood that Israel’s operation targeted not only nuclear facilities but also the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). There is a strategic background to this choice. In 2019, Trump declared the IRGC a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ and stated that it controlled Iran’s regional militia networks, ballistic missile program and nuclear strategy. Therefore, the implicit approval given to Israel’s operation is a continuation of the maximum pressure policy in military terms.

Furthermore, the designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization has provided an international legal cover for the operations. Attacks against the IRGC have been justified on the basis of the doctrine of legitimate defense and preemptive strike under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

By targeting the IRGC’s military and logistical infrastructure, the Trump administration aimed to cripple Iran’s ability to revive its nuclear program in the short term, strengthen its missile capabilities, and support proxy structures in the resistance axis. This strategy shows that the intervention is part of a long-term deterrence and regime transformation policy rather than a tactical move.

It is also clear that Trump has designed this intervention differently from Netanyahu’s line. While Netanyahu prioritizes aggressive policies in all circumstances, Trump’s intervention is based on the principle of minimum engagement, limited but effective. In this respect, it differs from classic neocon interventionism.

Netanyahu tension: Political stability as an obstacle to regional peace

The strategic differences between Trump and Netanyahu have become even more apparent in the context of the intervention in Iran. Netanyahu, who has become a figure under investigation by the International Criminal Court and is facing allegations of corruption in Israel, is seen as an obstacle to the normalization process with Arab countries. On January 8, 2025, Trump shared a video on Truth Social in which Jeffrey Sachs described Netanyahu as ‘the leader who dragged the U.S. into war,’ adopting a stance that questioned his credibility.

Another notable development in this regard is the contact made by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee with the ultra-Orthodox Haredi groups that are Netanyahu’s coalition partners. These groups threatened to withdraw from the government, citing the military exemption crisis as their reason, while Huckabee informed them that ‘U.S. support could be disrupted in the event of early elections in Israel.’ Rather than compensating for Trump’s lack of confidence in Netanyahu, this initiative should be understood as a calculated attempt to keep him in a functional yet limited role within the political equation.

The fate of the regime in Iran

It is clear that Trump is sending messages to Iran not only on a military level, but also on an ideological level. It is particularly noteworthy that Trump has been using the phrase ‘so-called Supreme leader’ to refer to Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei in his statements since June 13. In this way, Trump is sending a message to members of the Iranian establishment that their fate is in his hands.

Indeed, Khamenei’s advisor Ali Larijani said in a statement on Iranian state television on June 29 that Israel’s aim was not only to target political and military structures, but also to rapidly collapse the state structure by directly threatening Iran’s leadership. Another noteworthy piece of information in Larijani’s statement is that the building where the Iranian Supreme National Security Council was meeting was targeted, but this did not happen at the last minute. This inevitably creates the impression that it was Trump who stopped the process.

Peace through strength?

The U.S.-backed Israeli intervention in Iran between June 13-22, 2025, shows that Trump has built a foreign policy doctrine that integrates military capacity with diplomatic and psychological strategies, unlike the classic neocon line. This approach is based on a multidimensional balance strategy that avoids unnecessary engagements but does not rule out high-impact intervention when necessary.

By supporting Israel’s intervention in Iran, Trump did not merely target the nuclear program; he has succeeded in crippling Iran’s missile capabilities and proxy actors by weakening the IRGC, undermining the regime’s integrity by questioning Khamenei’s legitimacy, bringing Netanyahu’s fate under his own control, and ultimately using U.S. military capabilities as a hegemonic leverage in multilateral platforms such as the NATO summit. In this context, the U.S. intervention in Iran is not a regional war in the classical sense, but a multi-layered geopolitical reconfiguration that lies at the core of Trump’s strategy to reshape the international order.

(This article was originally published in Turkish by Kriter)