A more fundamental question
arises: If the United States was not attacked, why is it our duty to respond
militarily to an attack on Saudi Arabia?
President Donald Trump
does not want war with Iran. America does not want war with Iran. Even the
Senate Republicans are advising against military action in response to that
attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities.
“All
of us (should) get together and exchange ideas, respectfully, and come to a
consensus — and that should be bipartisan,” says Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Jim Risch of Idaho.
When
Lindsey Graham said the White House had shown “weakness” and urged retaliatory
strikes for what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls Iran’s “act of war,” the
president backhanded his golfing buddy:
“It’s
very easy to attack, but if you ask Lindsey … ask him how did going into the
Middle East … work out. And how did Iraq work out?”
Still, if neither America nor Iran wants
war, what has brought us to the brink?
Answer: The policy imposed by Trump, Pompeo
and John Bolton after our unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.
Our course was fixed by the policy we chose
to pursue.
Imposing
on Iran the most severe sanctions ever by one modern nation on another, short
of war, the U.S., through “maximum pressure,” sought to break the Iranian
regime and bend it to America’s will.
Submit
to U.S. demands, we told Tehran, or watch your economy crumble and collapse and
your people rise up in revolt and overthrow your regime.
Among
the 12 demands issued by Pompeo:
End
all enrichment of uranium or processing of plutonium. Halt all testing of
ballistic missiles. Cut off Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Disarm and
demobilize Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq. Terminate support for the Houthi
rebels resisting Saudi intervention in Yemen.
The demands Pompeo made were those that
victorious nations impose upon the defeated or defenseless. Pompeo’s problem:
Iran was neither.
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Hezbollah is dominant in
Lebanon. Along with Russia and Hezbollah, Iran and its militias enabled Bashar
Assad to emerge victorious in an eight-year Syrian civil war. And the scores of
thousands of Iranian-trained and -allied Shiite militia fighters in the Popular
Mobilization Forces in Iraq outnumber the 5,200 U.S. troops there 20 times
over.
Hence
Tehran’s defiant answer to Pompeo’s 12 demands:
We
will not capitulate, and if your sanctions prevent our oil from reaching our
traditional buyers, we will prevent the oil of your Sunni allies from getting
out of the Persian Gulf.
Hence,
this summer, we saw tankers sabotaged and seized in the Gulf, insurance rates
for tanker traffic surge, Iran shoot-down a $130 million U.S. Predator drone,
and, a week ago, an attack on Saudi oil production facilities that cut Riyadh’s
exports in half.
This
has been followed by an Iranian warning that a Saudi attack on Iran means war,
and a U.S. attack will be met with a counterattack. We don’t want war, the
Iranians are saying, but if the alternative is to choke to death under U.S.
sanctions, we will use our weapons to fight yours.
America
might emerge victorious in such a war, but the cost could be calamitous,
imperiling that fifth of the world’s oil that traverses the Strait of Hormuz,
and causing a global recession.
Yet
even if there is no U.S. or Saudi military response to Saturday’s attack, what
is to prevent Iran from ordering a second strike that shuts down more Arab Gulf
oil production?
Iran
has shown the ability to do that, and, apparently, neither we nor the Saudis
have the defenses to prevent such an attack.
A more fundamental question arises: If
the United States was not attacked, why is it our duty to respond militarily to
an attack on Saudi Arabia?
Saudi
Arabia is not a member of NATO. It is not a treaty ally. The Middle East
Security Alliance or “Arab NATO” chatted up a year ago to contain Iran — of
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states — was stillborn. We are
under no obligation to fight the Saudis’ war.
Nor
is Saudi Arabia a natural American ally.
Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman runs an Islamic autocracy.
He
inserted himself into first position in the line of succession to the throne of
his father, who’s in failing health. He locked up his brother princes at the
Riyadh Ritz Carlton to shake them down for billions of dollars.
He
summoned the prime minister of Lebanon to the kingdom, where the crown prince
forced him to resign in humiliation. He has ostracized Qatar from Arab Gulf
councils. He has been accused of complicity in the murder of Washington Post
columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.
With
his U.S.-built and bought air force, the Crown Prince has made a hell on earth
of Yemen to crush the Houthis rebels who hold the capital.
The question President Trump confronts
today:
How does he get his country back off
the limb he climbed out on while listening to the Republican neocons and hawks
he defeated in 2016, but who have had an inordinate influence over his foreign
policy?