What More Do the Iran Hawks Want?
Those who pushed for Trump to attack Iran are now moving the goalposts for success.
The Trump administration thought that its attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was a limited show of strength with no cost. "When you can't solve it diplomatically, you use overwhelming military power to solve it, and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict. That is the Trump doctrine," Vice President J.D. Vance told the audience at an Ohio Republican Party dinner.
Although President Donald Trump said that the U.S. would bomb Iran again if it tried to rebuild, he claims that will not be necessary and insists that a diplomatic deal can tie up loose ends. "I said 'Iran will not have nuclear.' Well, we blew it up. It's blown up to kingdom come, and so I don't feel very strongly about it. If we got a document, it wouldn't be bad. We're going to meet with them," Trump said at the NATO summit on Wednesday.
But the hawks in Washington who pushed for the U.S. to join the Israeli-Iranian war aren't satisfied. As predicted, they're arguing that the job isn't done and agitating for a more extended war. And now that the political barrier has been broken, it's easy for them to push for more attacks.
Almost immediately after the ceasefire set in, conservative talk show host Mark Levin criticized Trump for not getting Iran to sign "a surrender document" or killing its leaders. "So we have a ceasefire. I hate this word, ceasefire," Levin, who had reportedly been an influential voice in Trump's ear leading up to the war, said on Monday. "Adolf Hitler wasn't thrown a lifeline. He wasn't thrown a lifeline. He was going to be killed, so he committed suicide."
Congressional Republicans were more careful not to attack Trump's insistence on a ceasefire, but tried to shift the goalposts of the war from a decisive one-off attack on Iran to the beginning of a protracted campaign of whack-a-mole. For example, Rep. Michael McCaul (R–Texas) told CNN that the plan to attack Iran "was always known to be a temporary setback where they could rebuild the centrifuges."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) brought in his signature combination of flattery and demands, stating that Trump deserves a "Nobel Peace Prize on steroids" if he can get Iran to recognize Israel diplomatically—and implying that the ceasefire is worthless otherwise. "A ceasefire that leads to peace is a wonderful thing. A ceasefire that allows Iran to rearm and come back another day is a step backwards," Graham told CNN on Tuesday.
Graham's escalating demands shouldn't come as a surprise. During the Obama administration, he insisted that he only wanted pressure on Iran as diplomatic leverage, and took offense at the idea that he was pro-war. When the first Trump administration escalated against Iran, however, he quickly became a cheerleader for a military attack, with a particular obsession with bombing Iranian oil fields.
Then there was the administration's internal debate over how effective the air strikes were to begin with, which spilled out into the media. While Trump has insisted that he has intelligence showing the "total obliteration" of the Fordo uranium enrichment facility, the most important of the three sites he attacked, a U.S. intelligence assessment was leaked on Tuesday to several media outlets claiming that Iran's nuclear program was only set back by a few months.
Of course, the effectiveness of the attack is an important question of fact to get straight. But the timing and breadth of the leak—the report was published by CNN, NBC, CBS, and The New York Times almost simultaneously—suggests that it was a coordinated political move.
On one hand, a finding of only temporary damage to Fordo cuts against the hawks' argument that bombing Iran was a cost-free way to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. On the other hand, the leak could be a way to goad Trump into attacking again by implying that the job was left unfinished.
"The leak of the Iran strike battle damage assessment is clearly being coordinated by comms professionals considering almost every [national security] reporter has gotten a copy right before Trump's big appearance at NATO. The timing and scale of this show this isn't an Ed Snowden situation," former Pentagon official Dan Caldwell, who has publicly opposed war with Iran, wrote on X.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has hinted that it is already gearing up for the next round. "We have concluded a significant chapter, but the campaign against Iran is not over. We are entering a new phase, one that builds upon the achievements of the current operation," Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said in a statement to the media on Tuesday.
At the very least, Israel would require U.S. protection to fight another round of war. Both the Israeli and U.S. militaries began to run out of air defense ammunition after only a few days, The Wall Street Journal reports, and Israel is expecting increased U.S. aid to help pay for the 40 billion shekel ($11.7 billion) cost of replenishing those weapons, according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahonroth.
More money may not solve the problem. Using Jordanian webcam data, Sam Lair at the nonprofit James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies found that U.S. troops in Israel fired at least 39 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors during the brief war. The U.S. produced only 12 of those interceptors in FY 2025, and expects to produce 32 in FY 2026. It is the missile "overmatch" problem that former U.S. Central Command head Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr. warned about in 2021.
And even the short war did not play well with the American people. Separate polls by CNN and Reuters/Ipsos found that a majority disapproved of the airstrikes on Iran and wanted the war to end swiftly. That's why hawks are trying to desperately avoid a war powers vote—and relying on palace intrigue, language games, and appeals to Trump's ego to keep the war going instead.
