Iran Is a Test of Trump’s National Defense Strategy

At the end of last week, the Trump administration quietly released its 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS). The document warrants a close read.

Its thesis is three-pronged: the United States must rationalize its global military posture amid acute resource constraints; a larger share of remaining resources must be directed toward homeland defense and hemispheric dominance; and allies and partners elsewhere, particularly in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, will be expected to shoulder greater responsibility for their collective security.

The strategy is hardly isolationist. Rather, it makes an effort to prioritize interests and lay out the terms and conditions for continued protection from the United States. Nowhere are these tradeoffs more evident than in the NDS’s treatment of the Indo-Pacific.

The Biden administration deemed China the “pacing challenge” for U.S. defense policy. Yet in this NDS, China is no longer explicitly identified as the principal threat facing the United States, nor is the Indo-Pacific cited as our most critical military theater. The Trump administration made the prioritization of the Western Hemisphere and the de-prioritization of Europe’s defense crystal clear in the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), but left it somewhat ambiguous on whether spheres of influence strategy might apply to the Indo-Pacific. 

Some believed that this ambiguity was intended to leave room for the president to negotiate a grand bargain with Chinese President Xi Jinping that would carve out a sinosphere in the region and, perhaps, to move away from the United States’ traditional position on Taiwan.

Enter the NDS. The document recognizes China’s formidable military industrial capacity but lays out a more measured set of objectives for U.S. policy. It says that U.S. strategy is “not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them.” Instead, the NDS calls for a “decent peace,” defined in strategic terms as a “favorable balance of military power” and equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific that will “prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies.”

In practical terms, the NDS calls for efforts to establish a resolute “denial defense along the First Island Chain,” consistent with past administrations’ Taiwan policies, but makes clear that allies will need to step up if these efforts are to succeed. For the first time in post-war history, South Korea is explicitly called upon to take primary responsibility for the (conventional) North Korean threat. And while they are not named, the NDS suggests that Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan will be expected to make massive investments in their own defense enterprises because the United States will not continue to play such an outsize role in guaranteeing regional security.

This is consistent with Trump’s approach to Europe. Trump has repeatedly made clear that he wants NATO allies and partners to share more of the burden, and now they are. For the first time, all NATO allies are spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, and last summer, they agreed to meet a new target of 5 percent (with 3.5 percent on core military spending) by 2035. “Europe taking primary responsibility for its own conventional defense is the answer to the security threats it faces,” the NDS says, adding that the continent will receive “critical but more limited U.S. support.”

Trump has wondered aloud why NATO allies, which combined boast ten times the GDP of Russia, do not possess the conventional means to deter encroachment from Moscow. He has made it clear that European countries need to pay a significantly higher share of NATO’s security costs—in part because the United States plans to dial back its regional commitments. The question is whether Trump’s aggressive calls for burden sharing will be treated more like abandonment than encouragement, to say nothing of how revisionist powers could interpret the administration’s geographically constrained view of the national interest.

Given the current pace of world events, these questions are likely to be answered sooner rather than later. Indeed, the question on the table now is whether a strategy defined by structured prioritization can coexist with a president who has significant international ambitions and a desire to intervene forcefully around the world. Witness Iran.

On Wednesday, Trump warned on Truth Social of a “massive Armada” heading to Iran that is capable of launching an attack “far worse” than Operation Midnight Hammer. And while the president’s previous threats against the Iranian regime directly called for an end to the regime’s brutal killing of thousands of protesters, now his demands focus on the regime coming to the table to negotiate a “fair and equitable deal.”

While Trump’s post didn’t directly mention what Washington might ask of Tehran during such negotiations beyond “NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS,” reporting suggests that the Iranians have been given three demands: ending all enrichment of uranium and disposal of current stockpiles; limiting its ballistic missiles; and ceasing support for its proxy network of militias and allies that include Hamas, Houthis, and Lebanese Hezbollah. For Iran to accept these demands would be tantamount to conceding, at the barrel of a gun, the complete failure of its grand strategy and the surrendering of whatever leverage it has managed to retain after the setbacks of the last two years. The regime will need to weigh these factors against the risk of significant U.S. military action, including against senior leaders, critical infrastructure, and military assets.

Trump has backed up his threat by ordering the movement of the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group from the South China Sea to the Middle East region. Emboldened by the U.S. military’s operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela, Trump wrote, “Like with Venezuela, [the fleet] is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission with speed and violence, if necessary.” In comparing Iran to Venezuela, Trump suggests that an attempt at regime change is at least on the table.

But Iran is no Venezuela. It is unclear from the outside how brittle the regime actually is, and how much of a real threat to its capacity to retain power the protests represent. Moreover, it is equally unclear who or what would come after the ayatollah, a prospect we need to consider anyway given his advanced age and reportedly poor health. Removing Iran’s supreme leader will not necessarily guarantee the collapse of the regime, let alone usher in a democracy or pliant junta. It could lead to the succession of another ayatollah, the rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (which the United States, and now the European Union, have determined is a terrorist organization), the fracturing of the country along ethnic or other lines, or of course, the ascendancy of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the late shah’s exiled son. All of this is to say that regime change in Iran could involve the kind of longer-term entanglement Trump has been keen to avoid.

So, how far is Trump willing to go? Trump may be able to treat Iran as an exception to the NDS rather than a test of it. He does not believe America’s position in Europe or the Indo-Pacific is immediately at risk, which has allowed him to pull a carrier strike group from the South China Sea and wager that “decent peace” can be sustained while he works on the Iran file. But if he abides by the logic of the NDS, Trump will need to pursue a course in Iran that avoids a quagmire at all costs.

Tehran knows this, and that may be why Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated openly last week that “an all-out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to peddle to the White House.” Puffery, perhaps, from a much weakened Iran, but a risk the Trump administration needs to take into account nonetheless. The NDS and its focus on prioritization requires nothing less.

Let me know what you think about the National Defense Strategy and what this column should cover next by replying to [email protected].