His successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now faces a similar decision. But having led the country since 1989 and rebuilt it as a regional and nuclear power, it is by no means clear that he will make the same choice.
At 86, with much of his life’s work in ruins around him, he may prefer martyrdom to the surrender that President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel are demanding of him.
Iran’s first response was defiant. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is resolved to defend Iran’s territory, sovereignty, security and people by all force and means against the United States’ criminal aggression,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Iran has already launched a serious barrage of missiles on Israel. It may, as it has warned, attack some of the 40,000 American soldiers in the region.
What will be crucial is whether Iran’s retaliation is prolonged. If it does enough to convince the Iranian people that it has not capitulated, Ayatollah Khamenei may then decide to enter talks with the United States about a settlement of the war.
After all, in January 2020, when Mr. Trump ordered the assassination of a key Iranian figure in his first term, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, with a drone strike in Iraq, Iran responded with a punishing wave of missile attacks against American troops in Iraq. It then stopped, fearing a wider war that could threaten the regime.
Iran attacked a U.S. air base in Anbar, Iraq, in January 2020, after Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a senior Iranian military leader, was assassinated in an American drone strike.Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Iran has a variety of responses if it chooses, that both show resistance but also restraint, said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. Ayatollah Khamenei could approve leaving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and expelling the nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who have been monitoring Iran’s nuclear facilities. He could target those U.S. bases in the region that have largely been evacuated and activate the Houthis in Yemen to resume their attacks on American ships in the Red Sea.
“This would be actually a cautious mix of options designed to show that Iran has the ability and the daring to stand up to Trump, but is still trying to avoid full-scale regional escalation,” Ms. Vakil said.
“If Khamenei sidesteps strikes on the U.S., this lays the pathway for diplomacy and will signal to Trump his intention to de-escalate,” she said. Mr. Trump, too, by warning Iran of the strikes in advance and limiting them, at least so far, to the three main Iranian nuclear sites, also showed restraint, she said. The American attacks, for instance, spared political targets and military bases.
But Ayatollah Khamenei hardly trusts Mr. Trump after he unilaterally pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran agreed to with the Obama administration and other governments in 2018. Even if there were a new pact agreed upon now, Ms. Vakil asked, “could he trust Trump to provide sanctions relief and ensure Israel is on board?”
Iran could do a lot more, of course. It could try to close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, a move that could drive up oil prices by blocking oil tankers from leaving or entering the Persian Gulf. It could attack the energy infrastructure of Gulf States, as it did in 2019. It has a sophisticated cyber warfare program that it could activate. And it could work with Al Qaeda to hit Israeli and American interests in the region and abroad, from bases to embassies.
Iran will do more, and aggressively, said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. “Iran knew this was coming and will have prepared a chain of responses,” she said, with an immediate escalation of attacks against Israel.
But Mr. Trump’s efforts to draw a line now will fail, she said. Attacks against the United States “are now inevitable and will be swift and multilayered,” Ms. Geranmayeh said. “Iran knows it cannot win this war — but wants to ensure that the U.S. and Israel also lose.”
Israeli security forces near buildings destroyed by an Iranian missile strike, in Holon, Israel, on Thursday.Credit…Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
A lot will depend on the assessment of the damage done, which is still unclear. It is also unclear where Iran’s large stock of highly enriched uranium is, enough to make up to 10 nuclear warheads with a bit more enrichment, according to the U.S. military. Many analysts assume that Iran has dispersed it, perhaps where I.A.E.A. inspectors cannot access it.
The I.A.E.A. said on Sunday that there has been no indication of radioactive leakage, which would be the case if the uranium stockpiles had been hit, said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of “Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History.” That is one reason the United States and Europe should do all they can to keep Iran in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the I.A.E.A., he said, so the world does not lose its eyes and ears on Iran’s nuclear program.
For Mr. Nasr, the conflict is just beginning, not ending. For Iran, he said, “it will be live to fight again.” There is “no one grand gesture after which everything will change,” he added.
Most important, he said, “the larger lesson for Iran is that it needs serious deterrence, and a bomb is the only one that will work.” Iran’s missiles and proxies did not protect it, Mr. Nasr said. Even if Ayatollah Khamenei dies, the country has been shown to be vulnerable, he said, and nuclear deterrence is the most likely response.
Ms. Geranmayeh agrees. “This is the great irony,” she said. “Although Trump has sought to eliminate the nuclear threat from Iran, he has now made it far more likely that Iran becomes a nuclear state.”
And that could mean a future of continued bombing campaigns and Iranian counterstrikes, she said.
Still, Ms. Geranmayeh believes that diplomacy is the best way out for all parties. After a week of violence in the region, she said, “there could be a window for Tehran and Washington to come to their senses.”
Matthew Kroenig of the Atlantic Council, a think tank, is skeptical. With so much damage to their expensive nuclear program, he said in an email, “they probably won’t rebuild.” Iran has “spent billions of dollars and decades only to invite sanctions and a devastating war with the most powerful country in the world. Why hit replay on that tape?”
If Iran does rebuild, he said, the United States “can hit them again.”
