You Break It, You Own It? Not for Trump When It Comes to Iran.

American leaders say they are “punishing” Iran, “annihilating” its navy and meting out “retribution” against its rulers.

What comes after all that destruction, they increasingly insist, is not the United States’ problem.

“We’ll see what happens with the people,” President Trump said on Tuesday as he hosted Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, referring to the possibility of a popular uprising in Iran in the wake of the war. “You know, they have their chance.”

It was the latest instance of Mr. Trump and his top officials taking pains to paint Iran’s political future as being outside the scope of American responsibility.

They appeared to be trying to draw a distinction from what they derisively refer to as the “nation-building” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as Mr. Trump and his backers try to show that this Middle East war is different, they are also telegraphing that the risk of chaos or even greater repression in Iran in the aftermath is not their paramount concern.

Vice President JD Vance said on Fox News’s “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Monday evening that the Trump administration would prefer “a stable country.” But as long as Iran cannot build a nuclear bomb, he went on, “I think the president will be happy with the outcome.”

“We hope that the Iranian people can overthrow this government,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters hours earlier. “If there’s something we can do to help them down the road we’d obviously be open to it, but that’s not the objective.”