With his large-scale attack on Iran, Donald Trump has seized a legacy-defining moment to demonstrate his readiness to exercise raw U.S. military power. But in doing so, he is also taking the biggest foreign policy gamble of his presidency, one fraught with risks and unknowns.
Trump joined with Israel to plunge into war against Iran, and after a day of airstrikes announced on Saturday that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed, which would mark a major achievement for the operation but also leave unanswered questions about the future of the Islamic Republic.
Even as the crisis unfolded on Saturday, Trump provided little explanation to the American public for what could become the biggest U.S. military campaign since Afghanistan and Iraq.
