Washington, DC – Donald Trump says his goal in Iran is to “win”.

But the United States president has no easy path to victory against an ideological Iranian governing system fighting for survival, analysts say.

Iran is likely to meaningfully retaliate against any attack against its central government, unlike its largely symbolic response to the US bombing of the country’s nuclear facilities in June and the assassination of its top general Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

A decapitation strike to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top officials may fail to collapse the regime and could lead to further destabilisation, and a protracted US war could prove catastrophic and costly for Washington and the region.

“All the options are pretty terrible,” said Barbara Slavin, distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center think tank.

“It’s very hard to know what will take place if you do ‘A’ or ‘B’. What are the after-effects going to be? And particularly if the regime feels that its back is up against the wall, it could lash out in really horrific ways against American forces in the region, against allies.”

Since the start of the year, as a wave of antigovernment demonstrations sweep Iran, Trump has threatened to intervene militarily against the country if the authorities kill protesters.

“If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote in a social media post on January 2.

Over the past two weeks, he repeated that threat several times, and he called on protesters to take over state institutions, promising them that “help is on the way”.

But the government has led a deadly crackdown, and the death toll has risen into the thousands, according to activist groups. As Iranian authorities imposed a total internet blackout on the country, Trump appeared to dial back his position.

On Wednesday, Trump presented Tehran’s version of the events – that armed demonstrators were targeting security forces.

“They [Iranian officials] said people were shooting at them with guns, and they were shooting back,” Trump said. “And you know, it’s one of those things, but they told me that there will be no executions, and so I hope that’s true.”

Two days later, Trump conveyed his “respect” and gratitude to Iran for cancelling what he said were 800 executions scheduled for Thursday.

‘Sugar high from Venezuela’

Some reports also suggest that the protest movement appears to be receding for now, although it is difficult to verify the situation on the ground with Iranians unable to access the internet.

But experts warn the crisis is not over, and the situation could change quickly. Demonstrations may ignite again, and Trump has not taken the military option off the table.

Several US media outlets reported on Friday that the Pentagon is starting to surge military assets to the Middle East, including an aircraft carrier strike group.

Trump has shown willingness to deploy the brute force of the US military to advance his policy goals.

He has bragged about the killing of ISIL (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019, the Soleimani assassination and the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities last year. Just this month, he ordered the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

But experts say Trump’s chances of a swift operational victory in Iran are slim.

“This is not Venezuela,” Slavin said of Iran.

“This is not one and done, and given all the other crises, many of them self-inflicted, that he is dealing with – Venezuela, this ridiculous effort to take over Greenland – does he really want a massive crisis in the Middle East after having campaigned against this sort of adventure?”

Only two months ago, the Trump administration released a National Security Strategy outlining a push to shift foreign policy resources away from the Middle East. It said that the past considerations that made the region so important to the US – namely, energy production and widespread conflict – “no longer hold”.

The document also asserted Trump’s commitment to non-interventionism.

“We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories,” it read.

However, given the Iranian government’s brutal crackdown on protests, Trump may have “cornered himself into being a humanitarian interventionist”, according to Trita Parsi, the executive vice president at the Quincy Institute, a think tank focused on diplomacy.

“He may be on a sugar high from Venezuela, but that’s not replicable in Iran in that same manner, and it would require tremendous amount of military force,” Parsi told Al Jazeera.

How Iran may respond

After the June 2025 strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, Tehran’s response was relatively restrained. Iranian forces fired a volley of missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which hosts US troops, in an attack that caused no casualties.

But Parsi said Iranian authorities have come to the conclusion that they will no longer tolerate attacks to avoid a major confrontation with Washington.

“Even though it’s going to be very bad for them, of course, the metric of success for Trump and the metric of success for Iran may be very different,” he said.

“Trump may need to take down the entire state. The Iranians cannot win the war, but they don’t have to. They just need to make sure that they destroy Trump’s presidency before they lose a protracted war that goes on for some weeks. Oil prices shooting up, inflation going up worldwide, including in the United States, could be sufficient to destroy Trump’s presidency.”

Naysan Rafati, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, said Iranian officials were willing to tolerate both the Soleimani assassination and the strikes on nuclear facilities because of the limited nature of the attacks.

But the regime views the antigovernment protests as an existential threat, and even a limited US attack may prompt a stronger response from Tehran.

“If the Iranians are convinced that it’s a start of a wider campaign or that its effect on the ground will be sufficiently galvanising to spark another surge in the protests, then their desperate position could lead to reckless decisions,” Rafati told Al Jazeera.

If Trump’s goal were to collapse the regime, Rafati believes that Washington would ideally rely on a “synergy” of protesters reaching a critical mass and Iranians acting as boots on the ground, supported by a US air campaign.

But he noted that Trump is more inclined to pursue quick and decisive military operations.

“And here you get into potential scenarios where the ends are a little bit muddied,” Rafati said.

“Like, what happens if you end up in a scenario of US action, Iranian retaliation and then further US response – and then broadening of the campaign?”

Iran struggling

Despite the risks associated with military action with Iran, Tehran’s foes, including many US officials in Trump’s orbit, see a historic opportunity to take down the Iranian system.

Since the triumph of the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran has endured enormous hardships and survived wars, sanctions and internal unrest.

The Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s lasted eight years and killed hundreds of thousands of people. But the regime survived it, as it has withstood several waves of protests, economic crises and feuds within the ruling class.

But the Islamic Republic is currently living through the most challenging period in its 47-year history, analysts say.

The network of regional allies that Tehran fostered over decades – known as the “axis of the resistance” – has all but crumbled.

Hamas and Hezbollah have been severely weakened by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and its devastating 2024 campaign in Lebanon. Former President Bashar al-Assad in Syria fell to armed opposition fighters hostile to Tehran who have since taken power.

Even in Venezuela, Iran lost one of its last standing allies in Maduro after his detention.

Militarily, Iran’s ability to deter attacks has been severely degraded after Israel took out the country’s air defences and claimed total control of the country’s skies in June of last year.

Tehran’s nuclear programme was also severely damaged by the US strikes, and Iran is no longer enriching uranium, although it continues to emphasise its right to enrichment.

These external challenges have been compounded by a crushing economic downfall after years of sanctions. The Iranian currency, the rial, has lost more than 90 percent of its value, reaching an all-time low.

And the protests, which have been met by a harsh security response, now represent a legitimacy crisis for the government.

“The ferociousness with which the state has responded in the last two weeks underscores their sense of deep vulnerability, both in terms of their internal political legitimacy but also their strategic position in the region and vis-a-vis the US,” said Rafati.

For war hawks in Washington, Iran’s current vulnerability is a chance to “vanquish the great bete noir of US regional policy for the past 47 years”, Rafati added.

Diplomacy chances

US Senator Lindsey Graham, who is close to Trump, has been making the case that Iran is ripe for regime change, and he travelled to Israel this week to advance the push for war.

The interventionist voices around Trump, however, are balanced by geopolitical dynamics: The US’s Gulf allies, wary of instability and regional violence, have cautioned against striking Iran.

Internally, Trump must also face American voters ahead of the critical 2026 midterm elections, including large segments of his “America First” base who are largely opposed to war after the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Parsi noted that, even though the abduction of Maduro came at a minimal cost to the US, opinion polls suggest that the American public is not pleased with the military intervention in Venezuela.

“I don’t think his base is excited about this at all,” Parsi said.

“I think the base wonders why he is still so focused on foreign policy issues instead of focusing on domestic issues that they believe are much more important for their concerns.”

So is diplomacy still possible?

On Thursday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said he hopes that there is a diplomatic resolution.

He outlined a list of US demands for Iran: giving up on nuclear enrichment, handing over highly enriched uranium, cutting back its missile programme and ending support for “proxies” like Hezbollah.

“If they want to come back to the league of nations [and] we can solve those four problems diplomatically, then that would be a great resolution. The alternative is a bad one,” Witkoff said.

Parsi, however, said the US is asking for capitulation from Iran and moving the goal posts.

“I don’t see a likelihood of diplomacy succeeding unless there is a profound recalibration of what it is that the US actually seeks to achieve, at least in this scenario,” he said.

“I’m not particularly optimistic that diplomacy in the manner that the administration currently is envisioning can succeed.”

But Rafati underscored that Iran is currently already at zero enrichment, but that the country has maintained it has a right to concentrate uranium and bolster its defences.

“Given that the Iranian position, especially on enrichment, has been fairly consistent [and] its position on missiles has been fairly consistent, it would require a very significant shift in its positions, recognising that its economic and political fortunes are not promising,” he said.

Iran has remained defiant throughout the ordeal, describing the protests as a US-Israeli plot to spread chaos in the country. Iranian officials have pointed to Israeli media reports that foreign agents are arming demonstrators to kill security forces and attack public institutions.

Tehran has also promised strong retaliation against any external attack.

But Slavin said it is possible that Iran could compromise on the nuclear issue and give up its enriched uranium for sanction relief.

“That would be very controversial. A lot of people would accuse Trump of selling out the protesters, but I could imagine that he might take some sort of deal like that and call it a big victory,” she told Al Jazeera.