The weekend attack on Iran by the United States and Israel can be viewed not as the start of a new war, but rather a fresh battle in the four-decade war on terror, of which the Iranian theocracy has been the principal foe.

President Donald Trump is acting on a long-standing national security challenge, one that previous presidents have attempted to avoid or appease. To prevail, he will need a strategy, stamina and the support of the American people.

Critics of the strike want to know whether Iran presented an imminent threat at the time the U.S. and Israel struck targets throughout the country. So far, the Trump administration has presented no evidence the Iranians were preparing an attack, or that it had made substantial progress toward rebuilding its nuclear capability, which was destroyed in a joint bombing assault last year. It alleges, somewhat ambiguously, that the Iranians were building a "conventional shield" for their nuclear ambitions.

But Iran is a perpetual threat to the security of America and its allies as well as to the stability of the Middle East. If its radical Islamic regime can be toppled for good, America, and the world, will be the safer for it.

It is, however, a fraught mission that will require of Trump a clear strategy, the stamina to execute it and the support of the American people. As of this moment, it's not certain he has any of those things.

The president went into this battle with the belief that killing Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the heads of its military and security apparatus would trigger a popular revolution among the Iranian people, who would then take over and stabilize the country of 90 million people.

However, there seems no end to the mullahs eager to step into the leadership role. And Iran's massive military machine remains intact, as does its security apparatus. A largely unarmed populace faces long odds in prevailing — unless outside forces are willing to provide ground support. Trump, in an interview with the New York Post, did not rule out deploying American troops.

Still, this is as likely as not to be a prolonged conflict that will consume American resources and lives. The president predicted Monday the hostilities will be over in roughly four weeks. It's unclear how he intends to carry out such a difficult mission in such a short time frame. Does he have an exit plan should his strategy not work?

If Trump commits to an extended mission, the United States will face resource challenges. Its munitions stocks are depleted by four years of supplying Ukraine in its war with Russia, and its budget is already stressed from Trump's varied domestic initiatives.

Whether Trump needed Congress' OK before launching the attack is an open question that faces a critical congressional test this week.

Certainly, it would have been better for Trump to have had the go-ahead for Congress. Public support is so far shallow; polls show only about one in four Americans support the attack. The president will need greater backing if this fight demands additional sacrifice from the American people.

Iran is a horrible actor. It has bloodied Israel through its Hamas and Hezbollah subsidiaries. It has financed terror attacks on Americans at home and abroad. Over the past few months, it has slaughtered as many as 30,000 of its own people who protested the repressive regime.

Its elimination as a threat to the world would be an extraordinary accomplishment. But Americans should be prepared for the costs and consequences.

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