Where is the evidence that any
such secret program exists? And if it does, why does America not tell the world
where Iran’s secret nuclear facilities are located and demand immediate
inspections?…
Visualizing 150 Iranian
dead from a missile strike that he had ordered, President Donald Trump recoiled
and canceled the strike, a brave decision and defining moment for his
presidency.
Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence had signed off
on the strike on Iran as the right response to Tehran’s shootdown of a U.S.
Global Hawk spy plane over the Gulf of Oman.
The
U.S. claims the drone was over international waters. Tehran says it was in
Iranian territory. But while the loss of a $100 million drone is no small
matter, no American pilot was lost, and retaliating by killing 150 Iranians
would appear to be a disproportionate response.
Good
for Trump. Yet, all weekend, he was berated for chickening out and imitating
President Barack Obama. U.S. credibility, it was said, has taken a big hit and
must be restored with military action.
By
canceling the strike, the president also sent a message to Iran: We’re ready to
negotiate. Yet, given the irreconcilable character of our clashing demands, it
is hard to see how the U.S. and Iran get off this road we are on, at the end of
which a military collision seems almost certain.
Consider
the respective demands.
Monday, the president tweeted: “The U.S.
request for Iran is very simple — No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring
of Terror!”
But Iran has no nuclear weapons, has
never had nuclear weapons, and has never even produced bomb-grade uranium.
According to our own intelligence
agencies in 2007 and 2011, Tehran did not even have a nuclear weapons program.
Under the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA,
the only way Iran could have a nuclear weapons program would be in secret,
outside its known nuclear facilities, all of which are under constant U.N.
inspection.
Where is the evidence that any such
secret program exists?
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And if it does, why does America not tell the world where Iran’s
secret nuclear facilities are located and demand immediate inspections?
“No further sponsoring of terror,” Trump
says.
But what does that mean?
As
the major Shiite power in a Middle East divided between Sunni and Shiite, Iran
backs the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s civil war, Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon,
Alawite Bashar Assad in Syria, and the Shiite militias in Iraq who helped us
stop ISIS’s drive to Baghdad.
In
his 12 demands, Pompeo virtually insisted that Iran abandon these allies and
capitulate to their Sunni adversaries and rivals.
Not
going to happen. Yet, if these demands are nonnegotiable, to be backed up by
sanctions severe enough to choke Iran’s economy to death, we will be headed for
war.
No
more than North Korea is Iran going to yield to U.S. demands that it abandon
what Iran sees as vital national interests.
As for the U.S. charge that Iran is
“destabilizing” the Middle East, it was not Iran that invaded Afghanistan and
Iraq, overthrew the Gadhafi regime in Libya, armed rebels to overthrow Assad in
Syria, or aided and abetted the Saudis’ intervention in Yemen’s civil war.
Iran,
pushed to the wall, its economy shrinking as inflation and unemployment are
rising, is approaching the limits of its tolerance.
And
as Iran suffers pain, it is saying, other nations in the Gulf will endure similar
pain, as will the USA. At some point, collisions will produce casualties and we
will be on the up escalator to war.
Yet, what vital interest of ours does Iran
today threaten?
Trump,
with his order to stand down on the missile strike on Iran, signaled that he
wanted a pause in the confrontation.
Still,
it needs to be said: The president himself authorized the steps that have
brought us to this peril point.
Trump
pulled out of and trashed Obama’s nuclear deal. He imposed the sanctions that
are now inflicting something close to unacceptable if not intolerable pain on
Iran. He had the Islamic Revolutionary Guard declared a terrorist organization.
He sent the Abraham Lincoln carrier task force and B-52s to the Gulf region.
If
war is to be avoided, either Iran is going to have to capitulate, or the U.S.
is going to have to walk back its maximalist position.
And who would Trump name to negotiate with
Tehran for the United States?
The
longer the sanctions remain in place and the deeper they bite, the greater the
likelihood Iran will respond to our economic warfare with its own asymmetric
warfare. Has the president decided to take that risk?
We appear to be at a turning point in
the Trump presidency.
Does he want to run in 2020 as the
president who led us into war with Iran, or as the anti-interventionist
president who began to bring U.S. troops home from that region that has
produced so many wars?
Perhaps Congress, the branch of
government designated by the Constitution to decide on war, should instruct
President Trump as to the conditions under which he is authorized to take us to
war with Iran.