For those trying to unravel the mystery of what US President Donald Trump will decide about whether or not to attack Iran, and what he could possibly be thinking with his dizzying zigzags on the issue during January, at this point, it all probably boils down to one question: Is he seeking a nuclear and ballistic missile deal or regime change?
If he is seeking a deal on Iran's nuclear program and its ballistic missiles program, he can probably get some kind of agreement.
He would need to backpedal on a lot of his rhetoric against the Iranian regime in general, and against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in particular.
But he knows how to do that: witness his whiplash-inducing policy shifts on whether he likes/dislikes/hates Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Greenland, and others.
Israel would hope that it would at least get Tehran to agree to zero nuclear uranium enrichment and to a ceiling for how many ballistic missiles it will possess, which can hit the Jewish state (for example, what it currently possesses, somewhere in the 1,500-2,000 range)
With the right positive public messaging and economic inducements, this could probably be pulled off.
But Trump wants much more than that.
He wants to topple Khamenei, and possibly the regime.
What is Trump's goal in Iran?
The American president wants to be seen as doing something for the Iranian protesters after he let them be slaughtered in the several thousands or possibly tens of thousands, despite promising he would intervene to protect them.
Trump's problem is that he ran into "Venezuela Syndrome."
You know - Venezuela Syndrome - when the leader of the world's most powerful country swoops down and abducts the leader of Venezuela in a matter of hours, not losing a single soldier, and then relatively cleanly appoints the Venezuelan vice president to run the country as long as they share oil revenues with the superpower country as prescribed.
Who wouldn't want to do that again?
And so Trump was so excited after he succeeded with flying colors at regime change in Venezuela, he figured, why not do the same in Iran?
Then he tweeted about it to the whole world.
One million Iranians came out thinking he would protect them.
Huge numbers of them got slaughtered when he did not.
When the general public heard about how bad it was, he got embarrassed and mad and tweeted again that he was going to punish Iran for ignoring him.
But then all of his American generals, the Saudis, the UAE, Qatar, and even Israel all begged him not to do it.
Some did not want him to do it at all.
Some wanted him to do it, but to actually move his powerful forces in place so he would actually be able to do something significant - which he had not thought about before tweeting.
While waiting around 10 days for the US Lincoln Aircraft Carrier to make its way to the Middle East, it dawned on Trump that Iran might be a much harder nut to crack than Venezuela.
Suddenly, he was free of Venezuela Syndrome, and returned to his general preference for avoiding forever wars and avoiding US soldiers' deaths
But he did send out those tweets and moved a large aircraft carrier across the planet, so he has to do something or the world will go back to referring to him as TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) Trump.
And that is about where things stood a few days ago.
This week he started a staring contest with Iran about what terms it might give him on the nuclear and ballistic missile issues, so that he does not need to attack and take any real risks.
Iranian protesters will hate him forever for abandoning them, but Americans, Israelis, and Saudis will all be at least partially happy because he will have made them and the world less threatened - and all without firing a shot.
But Tehran has been humiliated so many times the last few years, it is having trouble seeing straight and navigating toward such a deal which would save the regime and sacrifice nothing.
Guess what: the Iranians have not and cannot enrich uranium right now because all their centrifuges were destroyed in June 2025, they could keep their current missile supply if they abandoned their plans to expand it, and they don't even really need to go easy on the protesters because the protesters mostly left the streets after being massacred on January 8-9.
Yet right now they may push Trump into taking some kind of serious military action against them that neither he nor they want.
So the game now is whether Trump and Khamenei both realize they can get a "win" by abandoning their largest goals and dreams, or whether too much has happened to turn back and Trump eventually loses his patience with Khamenei and gets over his fear of a long and messy war and rolls the dice in one form or another for regime change.
Israel would prefer regime change for sure. Ending the Iranian threat would be much better than circumscribing it. But circumscribing it would still be a game-changing victory. And it is not clear whether Israel believes that Trump has the staying power to ensure full regime change, versus just killing Khamenei, and getting another rabidly anti-Israel Iranian leader from within the regime elite.
Probably, the most important thing for Israel at this point is that Trump bombs as many Iranian ballistic missiles as possible whether he goes for regime change or not.
Until Trump decides, hold onto your seat.