Iran looms large over Trump's State of the Union address: ANALYSIS
He could use the moment to "turn up the heat" on Tehran, one analyst said.
As President Donald Trump prepares to give his State of the Union address, it’s still unclear whether he will strike a nuclear deal with Iran, adding a backdrop of uncertainty to a speech seen by millions of Americans and around the world.
For weeks now, military assets have been surging to the Middle East -- a show of force unfolding alongside high-level, high-stakes diplomatic discussions aimed at reaching an agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program and extract other concessions from the regime.
Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are set to meet with Iranian negotiators in Geneva on Thursday, according to U.S. officials familiar with the plans.
Tehran is expected to turn over a detailed proposal for a diplomatic agreement ahead of the talks, which appear to be make-or-break for reaching a deal.
But some foreign policy
analysts ABC News spoke with see signs that Trump is already on the road to war.
Just hours before the president delivers his speech, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was scheduled to brief a bipartisan group of congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight on the situation with Iran from the White House, according to two U.S. officials.
Administration officials have messaged that Rubio will soon travel to Israel, an integral ally in Operation Midnight Hammer, the codename for the coordinated attacks on key Iranian nuclear sites by the U.S. military in June 2025.
After those strikes, Trump repeatedly said Iran’s nuclear program had been "obliterated" -- a claim members of his administration have undercut in recent days as they have laid out their justification for a potential second round of attacks.
Trump also pushed back forcefully on a several reports published Monday asserting that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine had privately cautioned Trump that launching strikes on would carry significant risks.
"General Caine, like all of us, would like not to see War but, if a decision is made on going against Iran at a Military level, it is his opinion that it will be something easily won," the president asserted in a post on his social media platform.
"Everything that has been written about a potential War with Iran has been written incorrectly, and purposefully so," Trump continued.
The White House has set few expectations for the State of the Union beyond the president declaring “it’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about.” But the address has historically been an opportunity for the commander in chief to tout his successes and explain his agenda for the year ahead.
If the president believes the discourse surrounding the military buildup in in the Middle East and his dealings with Iran have been miscast, the State of the Union may provide him with a chance to shift the narrative -- or make his case for why he believes kinetic action is necessary.
"This speech comes on the brink of what is likely to be an administration-defining confrontation with Iran," said Jon B. Alterman, a former State Department official.
"The challenge is, it's not clear exactly what he wants to do with Iran, and he's unlikely to come away with an easy and clean win," added Alterman, who also holds the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Framing another round of large-scale military action against Iran as being in the best interest of the American people will be challenging because the dynamic is more complicated gambit that other interventions ordered by the president, Alterman said.
"The president's view is he's rolled the dice and he's mostly won,” he said. "I think Iran is harder to do."
Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, says Trump may be more focused on speaking to the Iranian regime -- predicting he could use the speech to "turn up the heat" on Tehran "one last time and almost commit himself to a military strike unless he gets the kind of negotiated outcome he wants."
Ambiguity on exactly what he wants out of any military action in Iran could play to his favor, O’Hanlon says.
"Is Trump going to go for an attempt at regime change? And I don't know the answer to that, but I think he wants the Iranians to fear that he might and is hoping that that'll give him more negotiating leverage," he said.
His approach to explaining his rationale to the American public might also be vague.
"I don't think he's going to get caught up in just the Iran specifics," O’Hanlon said. "I think he's going to weave it as part of a broader story -- the Middle East becoming more stable, the world becoming more stable, American leadership becoming stronger."
But Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Iran Program, sees decisive action on Iran as Trump fulfilling his promise to put the national interest above all else.
"America First means there has to be a clear interest and benefit to the U.S. for every move and action abroad. It doesn’t mean burying your head in the sand when your interests and security at stake," Taleblu said. "It’s hard to think of what could be a more America First foreign policy than targeting the Middle East’s most anti-American and terror-sponsoring regime."
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