President Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities was the right decision. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.
War brings pain, suffering and sorrow. None of that is good. It’s also true that a conflict, once started, can be hard to contain. Given ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, it’s easy to imagine that American intervention in Iran could bring retaliation or bring others into a wider and deadlier conflict.
It’s easy to understand why many Americans are skeptical of American intelligence agencies when they tell us that Iran was working to develop weapons of mass destruction. Our record in that area is, to say the least, spotty. But let’s not kid ourselves either. There is zero question that Iran was working to develop a nuclear weapon.
For one thing, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio pointed out, Iran hid their nuclear development facilities under a mountain. That’s about as subtle as locating nuclear facilities in an island lair like some sort of Bond villain. But you don’t have to take Rubio’s word for it. The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, admitted that Iran was working to obtain a nuclear weapon, and stated outright that Iran would continue to seek a weapon, even if it requires getting them from another country.
Taking military action always comes with risks, but you have to weigh those against the risk of a terror state obtaining nuclear weapons. And weighing those against each other, it’s not a close call.
A nuclear Iran was an unacceptable risk
There is broad, bipartisan agreement that a nuclear Iran is an unacceptable risk to the world. And that’s not just Trump’s position. It was Barack Obama’s position, too. And Joe Biden’s.
Efforts to end Iran’s nuclear program have been going on for more than a decade. Some Democrats argue that we should have stuck with the 2015 deal negotiated by the Obama administration. But that deal was never a long-term solution, as it allowed Iran to continue developing nuclear capacity as long as it agreed not to go beyond limits in terms of enrichment and weaponization.
Events have demonstrated that Iran never did give up on its plans or ambitions to develop a weapon. At best, the deal slowed the Iranian nuclear program. At worst, the deal bought the Iranian leadership time and space to build up their nuclear infrastructure and expertise.
The Israelis, who are the most likely target of an Iranian nuke, have done their best to derail Iran’s nuclear ambitions. With American help, to be sure, the Israelis have conducted cyberattacks, engaged in sabotage, bombed facilities and even assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists. None of that has worked, and Iran is, or more accurately, was at the brink of developing a nuclear weapon.
At some point, you have to either accept a nuclear Iran or you have to act. President Trump chose to act, and even if what happens next is unclear, there doesn’t seem to have been much of a choice.
America, and America alone, could do serious damage to the heavily fortified Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iranian leadership chose to play games rather than come clean. They continued to delay and deny rather than negotiate in good faith. They bet that Trump wouldn’t do it, and they could continue their program unobstructed.
The Iranian leaders bet wrong.
Trump is not interested in nation-building
The question is, what now? What happens next will largely depend on what the Iranian leadership does. Do they escalate the conflict by attacking U.S. military bases? Will they activate terror cells in the United States or elsewhere in retaliation for U.S. action? Given experience, it seems the most likely outcome here is that the Iranians will return to the negotiating table to buy themselves time to work on getting their nuclear program back up and running again. In other words, more of the same.
Trump would like nothing more than to make a deal with the Iranians, so that’s probably the most likely outcome. If there is a protracted war, and things get bad, I sense that it will look very different from what we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans have no stomach for a protracted war in the Middle East, or anywhere else, for that matter. Regime change in Iran is sorely needed, but doing that successfully would require us to escalate the war further, which would put us at risk of boots on the ground, and not even the most committed military interventionists think that’s a good idea − except Lindsay Graham.
Though Trump did launch the strikes, he’s not a neo-conservative. He’s not going to abide by former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s “Pottery Barn rule.” Powell’s “you break it, you bought it” line of thinking was that America is morally required to rebuild a nation after eliminating its leadership and destroying its economy with a prolonged bombing campaign.
Trump has no interest in more nation-building. Frankly, neither do most Americans. But Trump’s not an isolationist either. He’s willing to act militarily, as he did here, because he thinks it is in America’s interest to do so. He doesn’t see America’s interests at stake in Ukraine, so he opposes the conflict. He sees America’s interests at stake in Iran, so he supports it.
Imagine that you let a honey badger loose in Pottery Barn. And the honey badger was wearing an American flag and listening to Lee Greenwood music. That’s the Trump doctrine.
Uncertainty works both ways. I pray that Iranians make the right choice.
Mack Mariani is a professor of political science at Xavier University who lives in Wyoming. Contact him on X: @mackmariani. The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of his employer, his wife, this newspaper, or the Ayatollah.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: US strikes on Iran were justified even if they leave a bad taste | Opinion
Reporting by Mack Mariani / Cincinnati Enquirer
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