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.
The congressional Democrats claim Trump should have continued “negotiations.” This plaint comes from those, through their own zest for fruitless negotiations and a $100 billion windfall of canceled Trump sanctions, gifted to a second-term Trump administration Iranian uranium enriched to 60 percent and counting. That was not true when Trump left office in 2021.
Some on the forgetful left called the Trump strike “unconstitutional.” Yet over both his administrations, Barack Obama periodically and nihilistically bombed Libya into ruin and chaos, without any such congressional authorization. Even on the last full day that he was in office, as a Parthian shot Obama bombed Libya—and with the same B-2 bombers but without Democratic complaint.
There had arisen from the Democrats a charge that Trump was vacillating and cowardly—we even had an acronym for it: “TACO” (“Trump always chickens out”).Trump put to rest for good that smear on Saturday, if it was not already senseless when Israel struck Iran the minute Trump’s 60-day ultimatum to Iran was up.
In contrast, some on the MAGA right argue the strike will end up as another optional, dead-end Middle East “forever war.” But unlike 1991, 2003, and 2011, the Trump strike was no preface to a ground invasion, regime change, or nation-building. Instead, Trump’s June 21 bombing was, at least for now, a one-off strike against Iran’s enrichment program and effort to obtain a nuclear arsenal. Regime change was certainly not the objective of the mission, though it would likely not be unwelcomed if an eventual consequence.
Trump may continue to strike Iran in the manner of the Houthi war, but there is next to no chance he will send ground troops there. Never has an American president offered to open negotiations to end the fighting when the enemy was clearly losing not just a war, but the ability to defend itself.
Trump’s right-wing critics misunderstand him. He is no fan of the democracy promotion of the Bush years. But he is a “don’t tread on me” Jacksonian. He never ran or governed as either an isolationist or an interventionist. He seeks to recover and maintain American deterrence (as he did in his first term with the destruction of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps terror-commander Qasem Soleimani, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS itself, and the Wagner Group in Syria), precisely to avoid “forever wars.”
Most of the president’s supporters understand this. Polls show that the MAGA base supports the strike. The minority who do not, certainly otherwise agree with Trump on 85 percent of his agenda. For MAGA dissidents, despite their transient pique, there is no other political figure who has been so successful in pursuing their agenda.
Never has an American president offered to open negotiations to end the fighting when the enemy was clearly losing not just a war, but the ability to defend itself.
In his much talked about tiff with Senator Ted Cruz, even Tucker Carlson, perhaps Trump’s most vocal critic on this issue, pointed out that if it were true that the theocracy had ordered the assassination of the president, then he would support nuking Iran. In fact, the Biden Department of Justice last November filed charges against Farhad Shakeri for just such an Iranian plot. Since then, the evidence of Tehran’s culpability has only mounted.
Abroad, the Arab world—especially the vulnerable proximate Gulf oil-exporting nations—is reacting as expected. Aside from pro forma criticism of Israeli “aggression” and less heated “concern” over the American follow-up, Arab leaders privately communicate their real worry. And it is not that the West uses force to eliminate Iran’s nuclear acquisitions. Their trepidation is that Israel and the United States might not complete the job, abandoning them on the doorstep of a wounded, vengeful, and perhaps threshold-nuclear Iran.
Iran’s terrorist satellites have been largely emasculated. Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, and the Syrian Assad regime are either in disarray—or nonexistent. Most feel let down by the mother ship Iran. Tehran never took the lead to conduct simultaneous attacks on Israel. Instead, from afar it orchestrated its expendable surrogates to go it alone—and thus in isolation suffer the consequences. There is no certainty any of them will send their washed-out forces successfully against Western targets on behalf of their former patron Iran.
As for reactions from China and Russia, there is grandstanding rhetoric of course. But anytime they see an American president successfully use the nation’s considerable assets to neuter a threat, they are more admonished than eager to retaliate.
Moreover, both nations have invaded their neighbors (Ossetia, Georgia, Donbas, Crimea, Ukraine, Tibet, and perhaps soon Taiwan), but only to acquire territory and expand their borders. In contrast, the U.S., sometimes admirably or often aimlessly, uses force abroad to stop perceived aggression against a third-party ally or vulnerable people. So, neither autocracy has any credibility in their concocted outrage about Trump’s unilateral preemption.
More specifically, Russia is slugging it out in Ukraine. It is nearing one-million total casualties. It has no surplus resources to deploy abroad. It has de facto been expelled from the Middle East, with the collapse of the Assad regime of terror.
Despite Russia’s boilerplate outrage, Vladimir Putin may not be too worried that upheavals in the Middle East traditionally spike global oil prices and prove a windfall for Russia.
Both Russia and China, as non-Islamic nations, are not fond of Iran. They partner with it only as a useful anti-Western asset.
The loudmouth former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev just claimed that “a number of countries” are eager to give Iran some of their own nuclear weapons. That is nonsense. Russia and China should instead fear that Japan, South Korea, Australia, and other nations, worried about the reliability of the U.S. nuclear shield, might one day consider going nuclear. Unlike Iran today, all could do so in months, if not weeks.
China once bought 90 percent of Iran’s oil. It currently purchases 50 percent of Middle East exported crude oil. As an importer, China wants a quiet Gulf and a functioning Strait of Hormuz. Both Russia and China, as non-Islamic nations, are not fond of Iran. They partner with it only as a useful anti-Western asset. When it no longer has utility, they will move on, just as Russia did with the now nonexistent Assad regime.
For all their rhetoric, China and Russia, for a while longer at least, accept that the U.S. enjoys overwhelming strategic and conventional armed forces.
That unpredictability and competence are only enhanced by the recent strike. It could be one reason why China still hesitates to grab Taiwan.
What follows from the strike?
Israel may continue a Houthi-like tit-for-tat, bomb-for-missile exchange, at least until Iran opts out. And where would any further negotiations lead, since Iran’s only leverage was its threats to get a nuclear bomb? Would it now instead be left negotiating for the very life of the regime?
The West has waited nearly 50 years for the supposedly restive Iranian street to rise up. There is a more likely—but still only marginal—chance that second-tier generals would do so. They know their superiors are being killed off by the Israelis. And they do not wish to be next on the roster. The public will soon fault the military for its humiliating impotence and incompetence exposed by this losing war. And some generals may wish to distance themselves from and blame a losing regime.
They assume that Iranians resent the huge outlays over nearly half a century for the greedy and now-neutered Hamas, Hezbollah, Assads, and Houthis, and the even greater expense of cavernous nuclear facilities, and thousands of missiles. And now all that has been proven to be for nothing.
Given these failures of the incompetent regime, the surviving command may wish to redirect public ire from themselves onto the theocrats. And that may be the only possible way of ending this evil regime and the ruin it has brought everything it has touched.
