Come 8 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, President Donald Trump will face a choice: enforce his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, or allow it to pass.
America’s joined strategic and moral interests demand that Trump choose the latter option.
The problem is that Iran is not going to bend to Trump’s demand, issued Sunday, that it reopen the strait or suffer the destruction of its power plants and bridges. The regime recognizes that the strait’s closure is its key means of leverage with which to push Trump into a diplomatic resolution that favors its interests. Trump rightly doesn’t want to yield to that pressure, instead seeking ways to put so much U.S. pressure on Iran that it is forced to back down and open the strait.
But bombing power plants, bridges, and other civil infrastructure isn’t the way to accomplish that task. Indeed, such action risks only reinforcing the Iranian regime’s perception that this is an existential struggle in which it faces a binary choice between escalation and betraying God. And while the scaled destruction of Iranian infrastructure would obviously damage the regime’s ability to move forces and exert control, the Iranian people will suffer most directly from such strikes. That suffering will rightly offend the world’s perception of America’s otherwise exceptional moral character.
Some support U.S. and Israeli strikes on civil infrastructure by pointing to the massive Allied bombing of Imperial Japanese and Nazi German cities in the Second World War. This argument, as I’ll discuss in greater detail this week, is facile. Allied area bombing in 1945 was both a function of total war (akin to a modern-day nuclear war) and very limited targeting capabilities. The United States and Israel have exceptional targeting capabilities, and this is not a total war that would justify relatively indiscriminate bombing.
Moreover, scaled strikes on Iranian civil infrastructure would cause direct harm to U.S. interests.
After all, if Iran loses the ability to power homes and hospitals and provide clean water to its people, many innocents will suffer immensely. America’s honor would be stained. The country will also eventually but inevitably collapse into a condition of state failure. This would lead to a humanitarian crisis, proffering new mass refugee flows into Europe from among Iran’s 93 million-strong population. The strait would remain closed, but Iran’s collapse would risk an increased export of terrorism across the world, as fanatics blended in with refugees and formed new ultra-hardline factions.
Trump should be cautious against putting too much stock in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s advice in this regard. The Israeli leader believes that the collapse of the Iranian state would be in his country’s interest in that it would complicate Iran’s reconstitution of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and force regime-change focused U.S. engagement against Iran. But such a scenario would plainly not be in America’s interest.
Nor would a civil war likely lead to a favorable outcome. Not unless the U.S. was willing to join the conflict with significant, sustained ground force deployments. As seen during the mass protests that occurred across Iran in December 2025 and January 2026, this war has seen no revolt by even marginal elements of the Iranian security forces. The regime retains a dominant hand over the coercive instruments of power. Iranian state collapse would thus be a brutal quagmire that would increasingly consume American power and degrade America’s alliances. Does Trump really think European nationalists will rally behind him if millions of refugees start spilling over their borders?.
TOM ROGAN: IRAN WILL NOT ABIDE TRUMP’S TUESDAY DEADLINE
Trump should instead adopt an alternate strategy. He should maintain patient military pressure targeting Iran’s leadership and military power. He should simultaneously express openness, but not desperation, toward a realistic accord that sees the strait opened and Iran offered limited sanctions relief in return for verifiable restrictions to its nuclear program. If the regime knows that Trump is willing to endure the short-term pain of the strait’s closure while continuing to pummel its base of power, it will become more open to a serious compromise.
But making hospitals and water treatment plants go dark wouldn’t just be immoral, it would be a festering, self-inflicted gunshot wound to U.S. interests.