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If one of your national slogans is “Death to America,” you should be living in persistent and paralyzing fear of the United States.
Say what you will about President Donald Trump, America’s enemies aren’t making any more demands after Operation Epic Fury. Not after the president shattered nearly five decades of Washington foreign policy appeasing, legitimizing, and emboldening the Iranian regime, one of our most enduring and dangerous enemies.
It’s fun to rail against “neocons,” the isolationist’s euphemism for anyone who believes in American military action, on podcasts, and a far different story in a world where ballistic missiles, terrorist networks, nuclear programs, and Chinese Communist Party expansion exist.
Trump has already reset American foreign policy by rejecting both the technocratic naivety of neoconservatism and the unfeasible demands of isolationism. He has also shed the convoluted, pseudointellectual foreign policy theories that had congealed as conventional Washington wisdom.
One of the bogus “norms” propagated by experts, and now “America First” isolationists, is that any military action needs to be contingent on short-term “imminent” threats against the U.S.
Perhaps there was, as Trump contends, an imminent risk to U.S. troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. Perhaps that claim was just a pretext for a long-planned assault. After all, the deployment of aircraft carriers and hundreds of jets to the area wasn’t happenstance.
But why does the U.S. have to sit around until the breaking point to act in our interests? This is a self-applied, short-sighted limitation. It’s almost surely the case that the landscape would have been far more dangerous had Trump allowed the regime to regain its footing after months of protests and Israel’s summer offensive. Trump struck the regime when it was at its weakest, before it could stockpile enough ballistic missiles and advanced weaponry to create a quagmire.
THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC HAD ITS CHANCE
Preemptively eliminating long-term threats is a way to mitigate harm against the U.S. Iran could have agreed to stop enrichment at any time in the past 47 days, or even 47 years, and avoided conflict. U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff claims that the regime’s negotiators in Geneva bragged that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs.
Trump now has clear, achievable objectives: Ensure the mullahs don’t get their blood-stained hands on any nukes, end the regime’s ballistic missile capabilities, and destroy the Iranian navy so it can’t threaten world shipping.
There are also unstated goals. The U.S. acted to undermine Chinese military expansion into the Middle East. China was about to sell Iran supersonic missiles that would have allowed it to target the American military. The clerics pay for military upgrades in oil. Nearly all of Iran’s crude exports already go to China, virtually its only consumer. As with removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, weakening the mullahs weakens China.
Another bogus “norm” of the past decades was famously summed up by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who warned then-President George W. Bush before the 2003 Iraq invasion: “You break it, you own it.” The “Pottery Barn rule” contends that the U.S. has a responsibility to reconstruct countries after having beaten them. Sometimes it benefits us to participate in rebuilding projects to create stability, and sometimes it doesn’t. The U.S. can break Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities and its internal repression machine. It is under no obligation to clean it up.
Over the years, the Washington foreign policy blob has convinced many people that the U.S. has a duty to marshal a large contingent of nations before acting — namely, weak-kneed European countries with significant Muslim populations who offer little of military value. Similarly, some people are under the impression that the U.S. needs permission from the United Nations, a bastion of strongmen, theocrats, and fascists, to act. It does not.
“International law” has done little but hamper our ability to alleviate threats while allowing our enemies to act with impunity.
On the other hand, before Trump, U.S. administrations have refused to openly operate with our most-trusted ally, Israel, in militarily dismantling the Iranian threat. The idea was that Israel’s presence would undermine support from the Arab world. It’s in our interests to embrace Israel’s tech, intel, and military swagger and competence. “Capable partners are good partners,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth said of Israel, “unlike so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.”
Moreover, we’re not living in 1973 anymore. The beneficiaries of Israel’s operation in Iran have also been Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, all of whom joined the Americans in denouncing the regime.
WHAT TRUMP SHOULD TELL THE PUBLIC ABOUT IRAN
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) writes in the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. bombardment of Iran signals to dictators that they can attack weaker nations. Does anyone believe our enemies are watching us now and thinking it was an opportune time to move against our allies? Trump’s actions have restored credible deterrence. A vital component of employing peace through strength. As Walter Russell Mead has pointed out, Trump is essentially using a modern iteration of gunboat diplomacy, leveraging military superiority to compel concessions from enemies without engaging in full-scale war.
Making predictions about the outcome of war in the Middle East is foolish. But the unknown shouldn’t paralyze us, either. The best-case scenario for Operation Epic Fury is an organic uprising by Iranians that transforms that nation into a nonhostile entity that ceases exporting terrorism and Islamic fanaticism around the world. In the worst-case scenario, a weak, rump Islamic Republic survives. Right now, no matter what happens, the clerics are gelded. That alone is a win.
