Trump Demands ‘Unconditional Surrender’ by Iran, Shifting U.S. Objectives Again

President Trump laid out yet another, more ambitious goal of U.S. military action, one that could extend the war.

President Trump declared on Friday that he would settle for nothing short of “unconditional surrender” by Iran, the latest and broadest expansion of his goals for the conflict, and one that could portend a much longer war if he persists in that aim.

Six days into the Israeli and American bombing campaign, Iran has shown no interest, at least publicly, in surrendering. Instead, it has done the opposite, expanding the war to Arab states that host American bases and attacking them with missiles and drones, though in diminishing numbers in recent days.

But Mr. Trump demanded in a social media post that the country capitulate, after which he said would come “the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s),” and promised that the United States and its allies “will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.”

The president’s bellicose statement reflects how he has melded his longtime vision of a powerful America that makes maximum use of its military might with his new confidence in his ability to decapitate hostile governments, and personally install a new generation of leaders who he believes will bend to American will.

It was also the latest in a series of ever-shifting goals Mr. Trump has laid out for the war in Iran, leaving his aides, and congressional allies, struggling to keep up and at times contradicting the president. In fact, just hours after Mr. Trump made his demand, his press secretary tried to couch his demand, at least in part, suggesting that the surrender would “essentially” occur when Mr. Trump concluded his war objectives have been met.

Throughout the week, those objectives have changed. In the opening hours of the U.S. attack on Saturday, Mr. Trump declared that the goal of the attack was to destroy the existing order so that Iran’s people could emerge from their homes, rise up and overthrow their government.

But in the following days, both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pivoted away from the emphasis on regime change, saying that the United States was simply focused on assuring that Iran’s nuclear program was permanently destroyed, and that it no longer had the missile capability to attack Israel, its Arab neighbors, or perhaps some day the United States.

Mr. Hegseth went further on Wednesday, telling reporters there would be no “nation-building,” and spoke dismissively of the Bush administration’s efforts to build new governments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But Mr. Trump keeps returning to exactly that goal. He has repeatedly cited the model of the American action in Venezuela, where U.S. forces removed Nicolás Maduro earlier this year and sanctioned the ascension of his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, saying she could run the country as long as she complied with American demands, particularly access to oil.

Mr. Trump has resisted suggestions that Iran — a country with 92 million people, nearly three times the size of Venezuela’s population, and a government run by clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — differs in every respect from Venezuela.

“It’s going to work very easily. It’s going to work like in Venezuela,” he told CNN in a brief telephone conversation Friday.

The president said he was not concerned whether there was a democratic government elected in Iran, saying he was willing to work with moderate Shia religious leaders.

“I don’t mind religious leaders,” he said. “I deal with a lot of religious leaders.” As long as they were “fair” to Israel and to the United States, he said, he was willing to keep a clerical government.

Mr. Trump went on to say he expected Cuba to fall soon, which would give him a trifecta: a change in leadership in three countries that have been American adversaries. But he made no threats of invasion, and in the past has suggested that, cut off from fuel and support from Venezuela, the Cuban government might just collapse.

During the 2016 campaign, and episodically ever since, Mr. Trump has lamented that America doesn’t win wars anymore, with big surrender announcements, like the one Japan issued after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“We won World War II,” he said last year, when he signed an executive order informally renaming the Defense Department the “Department of War,” wording which now appears on the entrance to the Pentagon. In more recent times, he added, “we were very strong, but we never fought to win. We just didn’t fight to win.”

Mr. Trump’s demand now that Iran issue an “unconditional surrender” — an unlikely scenario — immediately raised questions about how long the U.S. would be forced to stay in the fight, and at what cost.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that Mr. Trump would be the judge of whether the country has achieved victory, not actions by Iran.

“When he, as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goal of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender,” Ms. Leavitt said.

But under such a scenario, surrender is in the eyes of the combatants. And already there are signs that Mr. Trump’s objectives and those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel may overlap, but do not completely align.

The Trump administration’s goal — or goals, since there have been about a dozen variations — seemed to be close to what happened in Venezuela, what Mr. Trump described to The New York Times in an interview Sunday as a “perfect scenario.” He appears comfortable with installing a leader, or leaders, drawn “from within” the existing regime, as he said earlier this week.

The next day, the No. 3 official in the Defense Department, Elbridge Colby, described a limited set of military objectives in testimony on the Hill. Mr. Trump, he said, had ordered the U.S. military to “focus on degrading and destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ability to project military power in the region and potentially beyond.” But he made no mention of regime change, even when pressed on the subject.

In contrast, Mr. Netanyahu had made clear, as Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution noted on Friday, that Israel’s goal is “not merely to remove Iran’s supreme leader, but to dismantle the regime entirely.” In Israel’s view, Mr. Wright continued, that is the only way to assure that the nuclear program is not restarted, the missile arsenal is not restocked, and that Iran would be deprived of its most powerful weapons forever.

Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Netanyahu has explained what happens if the Iranian government does collapse, and it is unclear how willing Mr. Trump is to send American combat troops into Iranian territory.

The cases of “unconditional surrender” that Mr. Trump appears to have in mind from a previous generation — notably Japan and Germany during World War II — were followed by yearslong occupation by American forces. The U.S. occupation of Japan, led by General Douglas MacArthur, lasted seven years, during which time the United States wrote a constitution for Japan, dismantled and rebuilt the military and created entirely new government institutions.

That was difficult enough in a largely homogeneous society. It has never been attempted in a place like Iran, with its Shia Muslim majority, but with nearly 10 percent of its population believed to be Sunni. And then there are many other ethic minorities: Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Baluchis, among others. In that regard, the better comparison may be to Iraq — the example of nation-building that Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Mr. Hegseth have all cited as a huge error that depleted American strength.

While Mr. Trump on Friday asserted that he would settle for nothing less than surrender, other leaders touted efforts to mediate a cease-fire. President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran said Friday that many countries had offered to host peace talks, though he did not name them. Oman sought a diplomatic offramp before the war, and Egypt and Turkey might also play a role, according to Mideast diplomats.

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