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Threaten Iran’s nuclear and energy sectors, ex-CENTCOM chief tells JNS
(May 24, 2025 / JNS)
Under President Donald Trump, a unique window of opportunity has opened for the United States to compel Iran to choose between regime survival and its decades-long pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional aggression, says Marine Corps Gen. (ret.) Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., the former commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM).
McKenzie, a distinguished fellow at the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), laid out a strategy in mid-May building on the forceful policies of Trump’s first term, arguing that Iran, currently in a state of unprecedented strategic vulnerability, can be made to one again “drink from the poisoned chalice”—a reference to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1988 decision to end the Iran-Iraq War to preserve the Islamic Republic.
As CENTCOM commander, McKenzie, oversaw the Jan. 3, 2020, drone strike that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. He emphasized the profound impact of that operation.
“This was the single-most important event to occur in the region in the last 20 years, before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023,” McKenzie wrote in a May 14, 2025, paper titled “The Poisoned Chalice: President Trump’s Opportunity with Iran.”
He noted that then-Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif affirmed the strike’s importance, reportedly stating that the U.S. “delivered a major blow to Iran, more damaging than if it had wiped out an entire city in an attack.”
Because of such actions, McKenzie asserted, “the Iranians know and understand that in his first presidency, Donald Trump was not afraid to employ military power,” a fact that deeply concerns Iranian strategists now that he has returned to the presidency.
An existential threat to the regime
Speaking to JNS on May 23, McKenzie elaborated on the leverage the U.S. current holds. When asked what specific U.S. capabilities or kinetic steps could credibly pose an existential threat to the Iranian regime, compelling this choice, the general replied, “Threatening the nuclear program is a key element of any threat to the regime. Beyond the nuclear program, potential targets could include the energy sector, including distillation and loading/holding facilities, power generation, and transmission lines. In short, targets that would immediately bring the economy of Iran to a halt.”
He added that dual use targets such as those he described should be struck early, “if a decision is made to widen the strikes beyond the nuclear program.”
In his report, McKenzie identified broader strategic targets in the Islamic Republic whose loss would make it “very hard to govern Iran,” including “Oil production, distillation, and distribution networks,” the “architecture of repression—Republican Guard headquarters,” and “Electrical power generation, transmission, and distribution systems.” This “should be a key component of our diplomatic messaging,” he said.
Asked whether some targets should be left intact to try and convince Iran to limit its response to such strikes, McKenzie said, “The targets to go to with under continued escalation would be personality targets within the regime. That’s what would let them know how much they have to lose.”
Asked to address Iran’s underground missile bases, which Tehran routinely showcases to threaten Israel, McKenzie stated, “The underground launch facilities are much easier to target than the deep nuclear sites. In general, if it’s a fixed target, it can be hit and degraded considerably. This includes launch sites.”
Tehran’s current weakened state is central to McKenzie’s assessment. In “The Poisoned Chalice,” he detailed that its “air defense structure has been reduced by precise Israeli strikes,” a reference to the Israeli Air Force‘s Oct. 26, 2024 wave of airstrikes, carried out in response to an Oct. 1 Iranian attack on Israel involving some 200 ballistic missiles, most of which were intercepted.
McKenzie assessed that Iran’s vaunted ballistic missile and drone force “has been exposed as hollow” following unsuccessful attacks on Israel, while its principal proxy, “Lebanese Hezbollah, has been decapitated and is a shadow of its former self,” and the flight of Bashar Assad from Syria has removed a key Iranian client state. “Today, the survival of the regime is less certain than at any time since 1988,” McKenzie wrote.
This vulnerability, combined with President Trump’s reestablished American credibility—further bolstered, according to McKenzie, by a recent decisive U.S. military campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen—creates the opportunity.
The poisoned chalice
McKenzie argues in his report that by “signaling the same willingness to, if necessary, destroy its nuclear program, President Trump can now force Iran to drink from the poisoned chalice—that is, to choose regime survival over continued regional aggression.”
Iran, he stated, “will respond and change its behavior if the regime itself is directly threatened,” as its guiding principle has always been regime preservation above all other objectives.
“As a military planner, I feel keenly the window of opportunity that is open before us. It will not stay open forever,” the former CENTCOM commander stated, warning that Iranians will eventually replace air defenses and further harden their nuclear sites, by further digging in their deep tunnels and nuclear architecture.
“As a nation, we have opportunities and options about how to proceed with Iran. It begins with the military option. It is within our ability to severely damage the Iranian nuclear program, setting it back many months. It is probably not within our ability to completely eradicate the program. The time for that passed in 2012 or so.
“Alternatively, with or without our cooperation, Israel could strike the program. Its attack will be less decisive than ours, simply because the United States possesses unique capabilities that Israel does not have. We could even attack together,” he wrote.
“Today, we can strike with high probability of qualified success, and Iran’s options to retaliate against Israel are very limited,” Mckenzie stated.
This strategy is discussed as the fifth round of US-Iran nuclear talks, mediated by Oman, concluded in Rome on May 23, with an Omani Foreign Ministry statement citing “some progress.”
Iranian sources told CNN they didn’t expect progress due to U.S. demands for a complete halt to enrichment, which Tehran sees as a red line. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X, on May 23, “Zero nuclear weapons = we have a deal. Zero enrichment = we don’t have a deal. Time to decide.”
This reiterated Iran’s entrenched position, while U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff had previously stated the American red line is no enrichment for Iran and American officials have previously demanded full dismantlement of its facilities—though messaging from Washington has been mixed. Before the Rome talks, Witkoff reportedly met with Mossad Director David Barnea and Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in the Italian capital.
Three recommendations
McKenzie’s JINSA report outlines three key recommendations for the U.S. administration: Maintaining an adequate and sustainably based force posture in the region to end the “ping-pong approach” of drawdowns; implementing maximum economic pressure by genuinely enforcing sanctions, particularly on oil exports to China; and most important, messaging Iran unequivocally that further attacks by itself or its proxies against Israel or other U.S. allies in the region, will be met by strikes directly against the regime and its instruments of power, including an immediate strike on its nuclear enterprise if nuclear breakout is achieved.
If these conditions are met, McKenzie believes Iran could be forced to accept verifiable limitations on its nuclear program and curtail support for proxies. While the long-term goal is a “politically stable, non-nuclear Iran that does not meddle in the affairs of its neighbors,” short-term objectives should focus on Iran renouncing its nuclear weapons program with verifiable measures.
Subsequent, harder objectives would be ending sponsorship of terrorist proxies and ceasing calls for Israel’s destruction, demonstrated in deeds.
However, he cautioned, “the Iranians aren’t particularly effective fighters, but they are master negotiators” who will seek to bog the U.S. down in talks, playing for time. Thus, achieving these goals “will require operating from a position of strength, not weakness, across the Middle East.”
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