As U.S. President Donald Trump decides whether to strike Iran, the specter of his past military interventions is looming large over the choice before him now.
Trump is reluctant to take military action in the Middle East because he wants to live up to his campaign vows to reduce foreign entanglements, according to multiple people who speak with him regularly. He’s also worried about the economic and political ramifications of embroiling the United States in a war with Iran, which stands accused of the recent attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.
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The president has hinted publicly at those concerns in recent days, saying on Monday afternoon, “Do I want war? I don’t want war with anybody. I’m somebody that would like not to have war,” while also warning, “We’re prepared more than anybody.”
At the same time, Trump has flashes of private regret about his only new military intervention in the region: airstrikes against Bashar Assad’s government in Syria. Trump has told confidants that he wishes those 2017 and 2018 attacks, which targeted Syrian facilities after the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons, had inflicted more damage.
“He heard a lot of criticism about it from multiple sources,” said a person close to the White House. One former U.S. official familiar with Middle Eastern policy said Trump “wishes he’d put a missile in Assad’s palace.”
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