Perhaps he thinks it’s going to make him more popular, or maybe he wants to distract from the dumb impeachment proceedings, but President Trump is threatening Iran in ways that sound a lot like war.
“They attacked us, & we hit back,” he said Saturday night on Twitter. “If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder than they have ever been hit before!”
It would be one thing if we could all be confident that Trump would make good on the threat, which should be taken as a guarantee that Iran will back down, yet we can’t. He gets credit for trying, but Trump routinely makes bad on his commitments, particularly when it comes to foreign policy.
Josh Rogin at the Washington Post covered this exact problem last week:
In Syria, Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops, twice, and reversed himself, twice, telegraphing his lack of commitment. Turkey called his bluff in the northeast, ignoring U.S. calls not to invade. Russia and the Assad regime ignored Trump’s tweet telling Russia, Syria and Iran to stop killing innocent civilians in Idlib.
In Afghanistan, Trump has signaled for years that he wants to bring U.S. troops home, while demanding that his officials negotiate a deal with the Taliban that will keep the United States safe. But the Taliban have realized they need only wait rather than make real concessions or give up violence.
Here we are again, with yet one more threat from Trump. The United States absolutely had to respond to Iran in a devastating way after it attacked our embassy in Iraq. Trump made the right choice in striking Iranian Major Gen. Qassem Soleimani. But now that they’re certain to escalate the conflict, we have to be prepared to do what Trump said: Hit them harder than they’ve ever been hit before.
The only problem is that Trump might not be prepared to do that.
