Set aside for a moment the enormity of Iran’s clerical tyranny having murdered tens of thousands of unarmed citizens. Even then, thinking only of America’s national security interests, without considering the moral imperative to stop a historic massacre and punish the perpetrators, it is nevertheless imperative that President Donald Trump should intervene with the U.S. military.
In truth, he has already committed himself to do so, to punish the ayatollahs and help Iranians liberate themselves from nearly half a century of tyranny. The question now is whether he will keep his word or will try to find a way to abandon it. The latter course, which seems less likely, would undermine the nation he leads and betray a tyrannized people begging him to act.
Trump made his commitment before sending what he called an “armada” to the Middle East, where it is now in position to pound America’s declared enemy. He made it when he deliberately and repeatedly used the term “red line” to demarcate the limit of American tolerance as Tehran sought to end a popular uprising. The line he drew was at the slaughter of Iranian civilians, and the mullahs manifestly crossed that line.
The president’s choice to draw his line and his readiness to refer to it again and again show he did welcome the comparison it naturally invites between himself and feckless past Democratic presidents. Barack Obama first used the phrase, saying he would not allow Syrian President Bashar Assad to cross the red line of using chemical weapons against his own people.
Assad went ahead and gassed 1,400 Syrians, and Obama did nothing in response. It was a humiliating American capitulation that did much to define Obama’s second term. It exposed the president as an appeaser of Middle Eastern tyrants. It revealed America under his leadership as a paper tiger. It meant future U.S. ultimatums would sound hollow and be easy to ignore. This was instantly a massive blow to America’s credibility as a world leader. It was a permission slip for Russia to invade and conquer Crimea and the Donbas in Ukraine in 2014 and Syria in 2015. Credibility cannot now be fully restored, especially after former President Joe Biden’s shameful rout in Afghanistan, without Trump frankly enforcing his red line and punishing the ayatollahs for insouciantly wading in blood across it.
Since first mentioning the red line, Trump has added, “If they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved,” and, “You’d better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting, too.” Finally, he promised, “Help is on the way.” He could not have been clearer.
But even while he was saying these things, there was a fuzziness as to what he would do. In one sense, there should be, for we should not be predictable in ways that help our foes. But a sense of dread that his help would come too late grew in the first week of January before the ayatollahs shut down the internet inside Iran on Jan. 8 to conceal the horrors they were about to perpetrate. It was then also that they brought in Iraqi militiamen, the sort of psychopaths who’d fought for the Islamic State, plus terrorists from Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and members of the Quds Force of the Pasdaran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. All are known for their exemplary brutality in the cause of Islamist tyranny.
It was with these killers rampaging through Iran, sometimes on pick-up trucks, mowing down civilians in the streets, that the mullahs blatantly crossed Trump’s red line. Their victim count may number 50,000 and is certainly more than the 33,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis at Babi Ya, one of the most notorious evils of the 20th century. The Iranian clerical regime defied Trump as imperiously and as bloodily as it is possible to imagine. He cannot now decline to step in without returning American global leadership to the rubble left behind by Biden. Failure to act decisively, which does not include coming up with a supposedly face-saving deal, would reverse what he has done to restore our country’s position since taking his oath of office a year ago. It would be U.S. national disgrace.
Thus, U.S. intervention in Iran would be a remedial act of American force projection to restore our country’s reputation, even before one gets to the issue of our moral duty. And the moral question cannot, as indicated above, be set aside for more than a moment. Part of the great power of America’s international prestige is due to the world’s understanding that it is a force for good. Trump’s critics believe he has sacrificed that invaluable quality. But whether they are right or not, and I believe they are not, it is clear that a nation that wishes to continue to be a shining city on a hill for the rest of the world must not edge spinelessly away from one of the clearest moral causes anywhere on Earth.
Not that there is reason yet to believe with assurance that Trump intends to back away from his promise. But that danger is undeniably present. The administration is in a flurry of negotiations with Tehran. This might be no more than a misdirection to give the United States time to ready the military and decide at last what form its intervention should take. It is surely not due to genuine belief that a plausible or honorable deal can be struck with the ayatollahs.
The administration is also engaging in shuttle diplomacy with Israel and Iran’s regional Arab neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain. Some of these, perhaps all of them, would be glad to see the ayatollahs toppled. But none has so far seemed ready to press the “go” button. Israel was reportedly instrumental in delaying military action last month because it had not prepared itself fully to deal with probable Iranian retaliation. The Arabs would also mostly love to see Tehran, the worst malefactor in the Middle East, brought low. But they fear it could ignite a wider conflict dangerous to themselves. They are like the Shakespearean cat in the adage, caught between “I dare not” and “I would.”
Both Israel and America’s allies can, however, be brought round to the view that toppling the ayatollahs is the best thing to do, that the perils of getting to that desirable goal are outweighed by the benefits of achieving it.
What, in any case, could the ayatollahs promise in exchange for American nonintervention? They could say they’d stop enriching uranium, the only purpose of which is to make nuclear bombs. But this is less important after Iran’s entire nuclear program, especially at Fordow, was buried under a mountain of rubble by Operation Midnight Hammer last June.
The “fair and equitable” result the mullahs seek might perhaps include Tehran agreeing to shut down its missile program, which has long threatened America’s regional allies and America itself. It could also presumably promise to end its suppression of street demonstrations, and indeed might do so for a short while now that it has intimidated the 92 million people of its vassal population.
But such promises are worthless vapors. Tehran has not stopped lying since 1979 and regards its enemies as fools for believing it. Islamism does not regard lies as sinful if they are told to dupe infidel enemies and serve the higher purpose of victory for Allah.
Victory for Allah, in the ayatollahs’ view, requires the continued spread of revolution. This cannot but include the suppression of modernist and secular forces within Iran. A prerequisite of the regime’s existence is intolerance and unstinting effort to export militant Islam to all lands that were ever Muslim dominated. These include the entire Iberian Peninsula into the Pyrenees, they include the Balkans all the way to the gates of Vienna, and they have come to include nations where Muslim minorities increasingly aggressively demand that host cultures adapt to them.
America and the West cannot make a deal with this. It must be defeated, and a good place to start is in the belly of the beast, Iran itself. Iran’s leaders are motivated by a Manichean interpretation of Islam that believes the universe, not just the world, is divided between the House of God and the House of War. The former is militant Islam, and the latter is everything and everyone else. In Islam, there is no rendering unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s; everything is God’s. In this binary universe, Islamist revolution is the raison d’être of the ayatollah’s regime. Promises of peace and tolerance from it are like undertakings by a tiger to become a vegetarian.
Having asked what Iran could offer in a deal, one must also ask what Iran would get in return. None is acceptable. Obviously, it would get the opportunity to stay in power over a subjugated people who abhor it. It would get relief from sanctions, which would open the money spigots and refinance Iran’s future terrorism and regional bullying, just as did Obama’s hopelessly misguided 2013 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This saw, among other things, pallets of cash being flown to Tehran. It financed a decade of terrorism, which culminated in the Hamas invasion of Israel in 2023 and the hideous murders of 1,200 people. A deal now by Trump would be as shameful and useless as that.
Precisely what American military intervention would include is a matter of legitimate debate, but the use of ground forces must not be part of it other than the insertion of elite special forces, as in Venezuela. It should certainly, at a minimum, include the destruction of Revolutionary Guard facilities and the regime’s command and control systems. An American military force is ready at hand and capable of undertaking a range of different tasks of varying scale with different goals. What should not be abandoned is action that ends the tyrants’ ability to resist and suppress their people. Amid this domestic uprising, American help, which Trump promised was on the way, should allow the people to throw off their chains.
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Iran is on the verge of becoming a failed state. The regime is ripe for toppling. Giving Iranians a hand to achieve that would rid the world of a baneful presence that has wrecked the lives of millions, killed thousands of Americans, and spread fear and loathing around the globe for decades. It would end a regime that lives by the maxim, “Death to America.”
U.S. intervention in Iran is a moral prerequisite of future American strength. It would put America firmly on the side of good. It would restore the nation’s reputation. And it would be an act firmly within a robust and credible posture of long-term national security.
Hugo Gurdon (@hgurdon) is the editorial director of the Washington Examiner.
