One month has passed since the US and Israel fired the opening salvo in Iran, kickstarting a war which has destabilised the region, disrupted global supply chains and caused an international oil price crisis, as attacks on energy infrastructure continue and shipping remains closed via the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
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US President Donald Trump outlined five objectives for Washington to achieve before ending its war with Iran. But now, one month in, he has suggested that the US may soon be “winding down” its operation, despite some of his key aims remaining undefined or unfulfilled.
By most accounts, US and Israeli strikes have significantly degraded Iran’s military capabilities and killed scores of senior leaders. But, those tactical successes don’t necessarily translate to achieving all the president’s strategic aims.
Some of his objectives are difficult to achieve and if the US walks away with unfinished aims and Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard still in power, Trump could face political fallout at home and global repercussions about what was accomplished in his decision to launch a war of choice that upended the Middle East and roiled the global economy.
The US president has consistently insisted that operations in Iran are exceeding predictions both in success and timelines. Here is a look at the objectives as laid out by Trump and where they stand.
‘Complete degradation of Iranian missile capability’
One of the main goals laid out by the US president in Iran was to destroy their missiles and “raze their missile industry to the ground.”
The administration says that the ability has been significantly degraded, but Iran is still launching missiles and drones, including a series of barrages at Israel as Trump claimed that negotiations with Iran were underway.
Trump said at the White House on Thursday that around 90% of Iran’s missiles and launchers have been knocked out, and that drones and the factories where drones and missiles are manufactured “are way down.”
However, over the past week, Iranian attacks appear to have intensified, with Tehran regularly firing barrages of drones and advanced missiles at Israel and neighbouring Gulf Arab states hosting US bases.
‘Destroy Iran’s defence industrial base’
Before last week, the US president and his administration sometimes listed this as a standalone objective, describing it as a goal to “raze their missile industry to the ground.”
Other times, this has fallen off the list. The Pentagon has generally lumped it into the first objective of destroying Iran’s missile capability.
The US Central Command has said its targets for strikes in Iran have included weapons production and missile and drone manufacturing facilities. Still, Iranian attacks against its Gulf neighbours and Israel continue, with officials in Tehran claiming they can continue fighting for as long as it takes.
Analysts say Iran has been mass producing and stockpiling weapons in preparation for such a war for many years, noting that Trump’s objective is unrealistic as these weapons, especially drones, can be produced in relatively small facilities at great quantities. It is also unclear how many of these facilities exist.
‘Eliminate their navy and air force’
The US and Israel quickly established air superiority in the skies above Iran, where they have flown largely unchallenged. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that Washington has damaged or destroyed more than 150 Iranian vessels throughout the course of the war.
After a US submarine torpedoed and sank an Iranian warship in early March, two other Iranian vessels — the IRIS Bushehr and IRIS Lavan — docked in Sri Lanka and India and sought assistance from the two countries.
There has been no indication from the US that they have since been sunk or captured.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has its own navy that also relies on smaller vessels to carry out swarm attacks and drop mines.
It is unclear how much of that force remains or whether it has planted any mines, but Iranian missiles continue to disrupt shipping through the chokepoint Strait of Hormuz.
‘Never allowing Iran to get even close to nuclear capability’
Trump made a dramatic U-turn over the last year after declaring that the US has “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme in June, only for his aides to warn that Iran was just weeks away from acquiring a bomb to justify the current operations.
Iranian state media said its nuclear facilities were attacked on Friday. A heavy water plant and a yellowcake production plant were struck and Israel later confirmed it was behind the strikes.
Israel had previously announced strikes on other nuclear-related targets, including the killing of a top Iranian nuclear scientist.
One of the most pressing questions in the war is whether Trump will seek to seize or destroy about 440 kilograms of enriched uranium that Tehran has that could potentially be used for a nuclear weapon.
For the first time on Monday, Trump, said the US would retrieve the uranium, which is believed to be buried deep under a mountain facility.
He indicated that would occur if Washington struck some kind of deal with Iran for the US to retrieve it. Without permission from Iran, seizing it would be a dangerous mission, experts say, and would require a sizable deployment of US troops into the country.
‘Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies’
Trump, in a recent post on Truth Social, added a fifth objective for the U.S: “Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others. The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not!”
The US already maintains thousands of troops on bases and other installations in the region.
It’s not clear how much further Trump is willing to go to protect Middle East allies from threats, and Iran is still able to attack those countries. It’s also not clear how far the US is willing to go to keep open the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has vacillated on whether the US needs to take a role in policing it. He has again extended a deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face attacks on its power plants, now giving them until April 6.
Additional goals not on the list
Trump has spoken about regime change since the start of the war, encouraging the Iranian people to “take over” their government after Israel, assisted by the US, launched strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and much of its upper echelon of leaders.
The Trump administration has never explicitly stated regime change as an objective in Iran, despite making it clear they want to end the repressive theocracy’s 47-year reign.
Trump said Thursday at the White House that the regime is “largely decimated.”
“You could really say we have regime change because they have been killed,” he said in an interview with US broadcaster Fox News.
Now Washington claims to be holding talks with elements of the same Iranian government as it looks to bring a swift end to the conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic. Iran, however, continues to publicly insist it is not negotiating with the White House.
And Trump’s initial hopes for the Iranian people appear set to continue unfulfilled.
Additionally, Trump had previously spoken of ridding Iran of its ability to fund proxy groups in the region, like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq.
White House officials have offered few updates about this objective, which the president has described as ensuring that “the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilise the region or the world and attack our forces” and “ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”
While the US has struck Iranian-aligned militia groups in Iraq, and Israel appears to be expanding its operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the administration has not offered details about how it’s going to permanently halt Tehran’s support for the militant groups.
The White House said in a statement however that ensuring that Iranian proxy groups cannot further destabilise the region remains a key goal and claimed that “proxies are hardly putting up a fight because our United States Military is so strong and lethal.”
