President Donald Trump has finally done it. After promising to come to the aid of the Iranian people after nationwide demonstrations broke out at the end of December, the U.S. has launched a war to target not only Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, missile stocks, and navy, but the leadership of the regime itself. It’s the biggest gamble of Trump’s presidency thus far—for better or worse.
The compound of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has reportedly been turned into rubble. The Times of Israel reports that Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has also been targeted by Israeli air strikes. Unverified reports circulating on social media have also claimed top generals in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have also been targeted, including its top commander, Mohammad Pakpour, according to Israeli broadcaster N12. Already, Iran has retaliated, targeting Israel and U.S. military bases in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
In the closing of an eight-minute address to the world posted in the early hours of Saturday morning, Trump made a direct appeal to the Iranian people. “The hour of your freedom is at hand,” he said. “Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.”
On the surface this may sound like a return to the regime change wars of former president George W. Bush. But there is an important distinction. Trump has not sent nearly 300,000 ground forces to the region, as Bush did in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war. He has not worked with exiled Iranians to build up a transition government. There are no plans for nation-building after Operation Epic Fury concludes.
Trump has instead offered to destroy a regime that he says killed 32,000 Iranian protesters in a vicious crackdown in January. What comes next is up to the Iranian people. In this respect the president has decided to ignore a pithy dictum attributed to former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, known as the “Pottery Barn rule.” Powell warned President George W. Bush on the eve of the Second Gulf War: “If you break it, you own it.”
Trump may have broken Iran’s regime, but he does not wish to own what emerges from its ashes. “The president is breaking his rule that military action has to be over by the time he announces it,” Trump’s former special representative for Iran and Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, told The Free Press. “But he is not breaking his rule about the use of ground forces. There will be no invasion of Iran.”
“The hour of your freedom is at hand,” President Trump said.
This may turn out to be a stroke of strategic brilliance. In both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars launched after 9/11, the U.S. military and CIA had great success in toppling the regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. It was the nation-building phase, which saw U.S. military personnel manning checkpoints and training new police and military forces, when those wars became quagmires as jihadists waged brutal insurgencies.
This could also turn out to be an act of profound hubris. What if Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps officers follow the playbook of Iraq’s Ba’athists and Afghanistan’s Taliban? It’s quite possible thousands may go underground and then seek to terrorize their way back into power, sparking a civil war in Iran and a race for whatever equipment and material remains from the regime’s nuclear program. It’s also possible Iran’s regime will hit key petroleum infrastructure in the Middle East, spiking the global price of oil.
“I think there are very few Americans who will disagree with Trump’s conclusion that we should not invade and occupy Iran,” Abrams said. “He is saying, ‘My job is to protect U.S. national security by destroying the ability of this regime to attack us. And that’s my only job.’ ”
If the war goes wrong, there are also dangers ahead at home. Already, the isolationist wing of the MAGA coalition has said that Trump’s decision to go to war is a direct result of being pressured by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Popular podcast host Tucker Carlson on Thursday told fellow podcaster Megyn Kelly: “President Trump doesn’t want to do this, but he may not have a choice because Israel has said, ‘If you don’t join us, we will do it anyway.’ ” On Saturday morning, Tucker Carlson labeled the strikes on Iran “absolutely disgusting and evil.”
Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Free Press that Carlson’s theory of the case is deeply flawed. “It looks from all indications that Bibi restrained Trump at the beginning of this conflict in January. There were aircraft in the air and Netanyahu urged Trump to pull them back, according to credible reports,” Schanzer said.
If the war goes wrong, there are dangers ahead at home.
Schanzer added, “Also, over the last month, Trump pushed for diplomacy despite the messages of defiance from the regime. He gave the Iranians every opportunity to stand down. Donald Trump is not known for his patience. He exhibited a tremendous amount of patience in this period. And you did not hear Israel challenge this in any way.”
Regardless of the facts, Carlson has a very large megaphone and he is influential with many of Trump’s supporters. Iran’s response will be blamed by him on Israel, and on Israel’s U.S. supporters, at a moment when support for Israel has plummeted inside the U.S. A recent Gallup survey found that, for the first time in nearly 30 years, a higher percentage of Americans had more sympathy for the Palestinians than for Israel.
Democrats in Congress were overwhelmingly critical of the attack. Jim Himes, the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that the strikes were “a war of choice with no strategic endgame” and that the president required congressional authority.
Trump has acknowledged the possibility that U.S. lives will be lost as a result of the war. As he said in his address: “My administration is taking every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region. Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”
In war, it’s wise to hope for the best and plan for the worst. Trump has acknowledged that his effort to rid the world of a regime that has terrorized the Middle East and Americans for nearly 50 years will not come without a cost. It remains to be seen whether he can persuade his own political base, and the opposition, whether that cost was worth it.
I don't support the Palestinians OR the Israelis. Or the Iranians. I support Americans and Americans only. Let this be the last time we have to trudge through the mudhole of the Middle East.
The far left, the far right, and the Islamic regime in Iran being bedfellows was not on my bingo card. I honestly can’t understand how over half of Americans have more sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis. Of course not all Palestinians support Hamas, but the majority did vote them into power. Iran’s support of terror across the region for decades should be enough for the U.S. to step in. Too bad we had to wait for them to slaughter tens of thousands of their own people to take action. I hope and pray that the people will rise up and install leadership that will secure freedom for the Iranian people.