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As a Republican who was broadly onboard with toppling Iran well before the most recent flare up, I would like to offer an alternate narrative to the one about Trump is a Joe-Biden-esqe meat puppet being controlled by a zionist cabal, that seems to be the popular consensus here.
First off what does winning look like, in the eyes of team Trump?
Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stop supplying arms to HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russian Federation, Et Al. Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.
Importantly we are not going to do the Clinton or Obama thing where we give them a whole bunch of cash and trade concessions in exchange for a pinky-promise not to act up again and then sit on our thumbs when they renege on those promises 6-monthes later. While I'm not privy to the specifics my guess is that the plan is to hold Kharg Island hostage to force Iranian compliance.
How is this in American interests? I think it is just as valid to ask as how is it not?
While there is something of an isolationist streak present in the online right the prevailing attitude amongst the wider GOP is that if the US is going to occupy the role of hegemon we must play the role.
First, I think it needs to be pointed out that, with the Biden-era environmental limits removed the US is once again a net petroleum exporter and the US economy is much better situated to weather possible energy-trade disruptions than say China is.
As the global hegemon, international trade flows freely (and for the most part safely) largely thanks to guarantees that are enforced by the US Navy. If the US is the world's cop, Iran is not some innocent brown kid who got shot for no reason, they're the habitual bad actor with dozens of prior complaints and arrests.
From my perspective democrats' attitude towards the Iranian regime seems to echo their attitudes towards illegal immigration, violent crime. If you ask them if they want violent schizophrenics on the train they'll answer "no", but at the same time they will vehemently oppose anyone who looks like they might try to stop violent schizophrenics from stabbing people on trains. They seem to view the occasional train stabbing or ballistic missile attack as simply the price of doing business.
If the ultimate goal here is to dismantle Iran's nuclear weapons program, the path the administration is currently on isn't set up to do that. That would require a ground invasion to secure the known nuclear sites, destroy the equipment, and remove the fissile material. But Trump doesn't have the stomach for that, if only because he knows it would be incredibly costly and would likely drag on much longer than he can endure politically. Such an invasion would have a high risk of turning into an Iraq-style quagmire. You don't seem to be advocating for that either, and instead propose two half-measure options.
Option A is less likely to happen now than it was before the war, and the chances were already diminished after Trump backed out of the JCPOA. You can complain all you want about the lack of "any time, anywhere" inspections, but Iran was already giving up quite a lot in exchange for relatively little. The big prize for Iran was the lifting of UN sanctions, but those weren't affected by the US pullout. The actual US sanctions relief provided wasn't much, and there was no plan to resume normal relations. If Trump was concerned that Iran wasn't holding up their end of the deal, there were mechanisms for that to be adjudicated, but he had no interest in hearing what an independent panel had to say about the matter. All his actions served to accomplish was a more complete erosion of trust. If Trump wanted more from the Iran deal he could have gone back to the bargaining table and offered more concessions. As someone who likes to pretend he's a master dealmaker, he doesn't seem to understand that you get what you pay for.
Of course, Trump wasn't the first person to poison this well. Back in the days before anyone was concerned about a nuclear Iran, the Iranians elected their version of an opposition candidate as president, one who did not have the endorsement of the Supreme Leader and who ran on a platform of increased dialogue with the West. There were some early successes under the Clinton administration (largely undone due to suspicion of involvement in the USS Cole bombing), and Iran denounced the 9/11 terrorists and provided key US intelligence in the invasion of Afghanistan. Then Bush gave his Axis of Evil speech, which didn't help matters, and when Iran offered their assistance with the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration stonewalled them. The effect of all of this was that the Iranian electorate came to believe that dialogue with the US was pointless, and the moderates were driven out of power. Instead you get Ahmadinejad, a revived nuclear weapons program, and intransigence in the face of international pressure. And then after they think they have a deal Trump looks for a reason to back out. Why would the Iranian government think they can trust the US to hold up their end of any bargain? Even if they agree to the kind of verifiable reductions that you're talking about, the US doesn't have a great track record with those, either. Hans Blix said numerous times in the months prior to the Iraq War that his inspection teams couldn't find any evidence of WMD facilities, but the US decided to believe their own intelligence instead and invaded anyway. If Iran actually is a nuclear threat, then their best bet at this point is to develop nukes before the US stops them, which, as I said at the beginning, they aren't going to do.
Option B is more likely to happen, but you seem to forget that Afghanistan played a key role in the worst terrorist attack in US history. Such a key role that invading them was uncontroversial. And such a scenario doesn't preclude them from getting nukes. If Iranians cause another 9/11, what do you do then? You've already bombed them back to the Stone Age, so that isn't going to be an option.
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