VICTOR DAVIS HANSON- WHY TRUMP’S STRIKE WORKED
It is difficult to imagine any other Republican or Democratic president taking such a risk to hit Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The Middle East is understandably viewed as the graveyard of presidential misadventures, where an administration’s good polls crash and sometimes do not revive.
Jimmy Carter’s reelection hopes blew up after the failed 1980 rescue mission. Iran-Contra almost sabotaged Ronald Reagan. Even the successful 1991 Gulf War ended poorly with the survival of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the ensuing endless “no fly zones”—and a repudiated George H.W. Bush in 1992.
George W. Bush lost control of his presidency with the devolution of the 2003 Iraq War. Joe Biden’s polls never recovered from the skedaddle from Kabul, Afghanistan.
But President Donald Trump’s limited and defined agenda—and unpredictability—was a different operation and may avoid such a fate.
His administration has likely destroyed most of the Iran nuclear infrastructure at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. So far, the only Iranian response seems to have been a half-hearted attempt to strike a US base in Qatar. All signs point to that being a limited and largely symbolic retaliation: Tehran even gave Qatar advance notice of the attack and the base had been evacuated.
The initial success of Trump’s strike on Iran can be appreciated by the poverty of both foreign and domestic criticism. The American left claimed the bombing was unnecessary and without provocation. More likely it was long overdue given the 1979 storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran; the mass-murdering of Americans at the Beirut embassy and Marine Corps barracks in 1983; the blowing up of thousands of Americans in Iraq; and the plans to assassinate Trump. In short, the Iranian theocracy has for nearly half a century waged a one-sided war against America, without much retaliation—until now.
Indeed, the terrorist Iranian regime alone largely explains why there are still so many American bases in Syria, Iraq, and the Gulf, even after the erosion of al-Qaeda and ISIS capabilities.
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