Despite Donald Trump’s shocking declarations and his meeting on Tuesday presented as “positive” with Benjamin Netanyahu, the United States increasingly seems to have its hands tied in the face of Iran.
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Moreover, a few hours after the Israeli Prime Minister’s visit to the White House, Iranian missiles targeting American bases in the Middle East were intercepted.
“Did the Iranian side want to test what was said behind closed doors – because we had very little echo of their discussion – by launching an attack to see if ultimately, on the American and Israeli side, they wanted to relaunch hostilities on a larger scale? », questioned the analyst and doctoral student at Sciences Po Paris, Georges Mercier, in an interview with LCN.
Georges Mercier, analyst and doctoral student in political science at Sciences Po Paris, July 29, 2026
LCN screenshot
By attempting to strike an American base, Tehran could also have simply wanted to test the interception capabilities of the United States, suggests the specialist in international politics.
Donald Trump has already announced that the American response would be very severe, but it is not certain that he will move from words to action.
“The paradox of the war today is that the Americans, from a military point of view, seem to have done everything they could do to put pressure on the Iranians,” underlines Georges Mercier.
“Obviously, the American president could eventually decide to carry out his famous threat, to systematically strike the Iranians’ energy plants and civilian infrastructure,” he adds.
The problem is that the United States seemed to be banking on an uprising of the Iranian population against the regime in Tehran, but attacking civilian targets would undermine this objective.
“If the Americans start attacking civilian infrastructure and they increase the pain of the average Iranian, but the hopes that the population will rise up, they diminish. So yes, we could escalate on the American side, but we are perhaps not ready to assume the consequences of this escalation,” maintains the political analyst.
The possibility of a land landing by the American army is also very uncertain.
“So far, there is no political appetite for this in the United States and we do not seem to have the necessary troops in the Middle East. So we’ll see what they’re going to do, they might just continue doing what they’ve been doing for several days and weeks now: hitting military installations in the hope that it will force the Iranian regime to come to the negotiating table, it’s not working so far and we have little reason to believe that it will work. [dans le futur]», summarizes Georges Mercier.
To see the full interview, watch the video above.
