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Very lengthy and thorough piece.

Excerpts (about 1/4 of article):

Two weeks into a war against Iran that he chose to launch, President Trump faces a stark choice — stay in the battle to achieve the dauntingly ambitious goals he has set, or try to extract himself from an expanding and intensifying conflict that is generating damaging military, diplomatic and economic shock waves.

He has quickly discovered that both options are deeply problematic, littered with consequences that he and his team downplayed when he plunged the United States, alongside Israel, into the biggest war in the Middle East in nearly a quarter-century.

He can continue to fight a weakened enemy that has nevertheless proved adept at extracting a fast-rising economic price for the United States and its allies, tying the global energy markets in knots and striking a dozen countries across the region.

Battling on would put more American lives at risk, accelerate the financial costs and risk further fraying alliances. There is angst within Mr. Trump’s political base over the sharp departure from his pledge to avoid entangling the nation in more wars.

Or he can begin to pull back, even though most of his objectives — including assuring that Iran never again possesses the capability to produce a nuclear weapon — are not yet met. The biggest military accomplishments of the joint U.S.-Israel action so far, officials say, have been wiping out much of Iran’s missile arsenal and air defenses and crippling its navy. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s brutal leader for nearly 40 years, is dead.

But an emboldened theocracy is still in power, apparently commanded by the ayatollah’s injured son, who has already sworn to continue deploying Iran’s asymmetrical capabilities, from cyberattacks to planting sea mines and conducting missile strikes on targets in the region. The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps paramilitary force and the militias that killed thousands of protesting Iranians on the streets in January remain in place.

Moreover, if Mr. Trump leaves now, the stockpile of near-bomb-grade nuclear fuel that is at the heart of fears that Iran could manufacture 10 or more nuclear weapons would remain inside Iranian territory, within reach of a wounded Iranian government that may be more motivated than ever to turn that fuel into weapons.

Mr. Trump has wrestled publicly with his stay-or-leave options, sometimes suggesting that the war is all but won and at others seeming to acknowledge that there is still heavy fighting ahead. The president, who said he ordered the attack because he had a “good feeling” that Iran was preparing to preemptively attack U.S. forces in the region, said the other day that he would also rely on his instincts on when to get out. He told Fox News he would “feel it in my bones.”

The second week of the war brought a recognition by the Trump administration that Iran’s willingness and ability to disrupt the global economy by choking off the Strait of Hormuz was greater than officials had anticipated, as was Tehran’s capacity to widen the war across the region, according to interviews with officials in the United States and Israel, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters.

Even as Mr. Trump repeatedly suggested that the war was almost won, the United States and Israel continued to step up the tempo of their operations and the United States continued to move more military resources into the region. There were signs that the U.S.-Israel partnership was undergoing strains. And some Republicans worried that Mr. Trump’s political base — deeply suspicious of foreign interventions — could fracture if the American commitment grows and U.S. casualties mounted.

The one solution being discussed the most is having the U.S. Navy escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz — a costly and risky operation and one that administration officials conceded was probably weeks away. The United States would need to assemble even more ships and defensive equipment, and conduct further assaults on the Iranian weaponry that menaces the strait.

But while American leaders were bringing in reinforcements, so were the Iranians — of a different kind. Iran built up a talented cybercorps after the United States and Israel mounted a sophisticated cyberattack on the country’s nuclear centrifuges more than 16 years ago. Now Iran’s hackers were being called into service, directed at targets in both Israel and the United States.

Now there is little doubt that the war will dominate the Beijing summit. Last year, President Xi Jinping of China used his control over critical rare earth minerals and magnets to force Mr. Trump to back down on tariffs; now he must face the possibility that this year Mr. Trump could control oil shipments to Chinese refineries from Venezuela and, depending how the war turns out, Iran.

In 2025 China purchased about 1.4 million barrels per day of Iranian oil, more than 13 percent of the oil it brought in by sea. (For Iran, China is overwhelmingly its biggest customer.)

Even as he prepares for the summit, Mr. Trump will have to grapple with two of the biggest decisions of the war: whether to attack, with ground troops, Kharg Island and the nuclear storage facilities where about 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade uranium is believed to remain.

They each pose very different challenges. The island is an exposed target, accessible to the U.S. Navy at the northern end of the Persian Gulf. But seizing it means protecting an occupying force from remnants of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which could launch strikes from the shore or small boats, or blow up the pipelines that supply the port facilities on the island with Iranian oil. That could require a continuing military presence of exactly the kind that Mr. Trump’s political base has warned against and that Mr. Trump himself said he would never repeat.

But if it is successful, Mr. Trump will have full control of the port that most Iranian oil exports originate from — and thus a stranglehold on the country’s economy.

The seizure of the nuclear fuel, on the other hand, would be a one-time raid, but even riskier.

Most of the uranium enriched to 60 percent — just shy of what is needed to produce nuclear weapons — is stored in deep tunnels in Isfahan, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is in gas form, in canisters that could each fit in the trunk of a car.

But the tunnels are hard to get at, especially after the United States bombed the facility last June, collapsing many of the entrances. American and European intelligence agencies, which have been watching the Isfahan plant by satellite, say that while some access has been reopened, they see no evidence that the fuel has been removed. But that does not make it any easier to get at.

Special Operations forces would either have to go in stealthily, and hope to gain quick access, or go in with a huge protective force and spend days or weeks carefully extracting the canisters. There is little room for error: If the canisters were pierced and moisture entered them, the result would be both highly toxic and radioactive. If they were kept too close together, there would be risk of triggering a critical nuclear reaction.

The issue is all the more urgent, American officials say, because the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is more desperate than ever — and may view keeping the nuclear fuel in Iran as the kind of leverage that could get the United States to back off.

“We haven’t made any decision on that,” Mr. Trump said about seizing the material. “We’re nowhere near it,” he said, which suggests that the war may have a long way to go.


Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/us/politics/trump-stark-choices-iran-war.html