Here are some of the goals that have been laid out for the conflict in Iran:
- Regime change
- Keeping the strait open
- Eliminating Iran’s ability to fund its terrorist proxies
None of these things matter if we are unsuccessful in achieving the ultimate goal that would eliminate the existential threat that Iran poses, were it to enrich its stock of uranium into nuclear weapons.
Turn on a political debate show and you will find pundits discussing the impact of this war on Trump‘s poll numbers, on NATO, on oil prices, on the stock market, or on the midterms.
Such inside-the-political-beltway discussions are a sideshow compared to the one and only issue that matters in this endeavor — protecting American cities from being detonated by an atomic weapon that Iran would almost surely use against us.
It’s odd how commentators misunderstand what an existential threat truly is. For the last decade, we’ve been hearing from the Al Gores and Greta Thunbergs that a one-degree increase in temperature over the next century will constitute an existential threat to humanity.
It’s not. This is not to say that climate change isn’t real, and that measures should not be taken to mitigate its impact, but contrary to the scare tactics employed by the climate zealots, millions of people are not at risk of dying if the temperature rises slightly as predicted.
On the other hand, it would indeed be an existential threat to America if Iran could convert its enriched uranium into an atomic weapon and detonate that weapon in an American city, such as New York or Washington, D.C. (It doesn’t need to be through an intercontinental ballistic missile. It could be through a barge along the river.)
For decades, American politicians appeared to recognize this, which is why every president going back to Ronald Reagan said that we could never allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. They repeated these words over and over, but never took any concrete steps to truly prevent the crazy mullahs in Tehran from accumulating the materials necessary to construct a nuke.
The initial bombing of Iran was meant to either bring about regime change or at least bring the mullahs to the negotiation table. Regime change is not an end in itself, but rather a means by which to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
The idea that this incursion would be simple and without any consequences or sacrifice involved is foolish. The president often hurts himself by saying we’ve already won, and that any war would be over in a few weeks — or that oil prices will be coming down shortly. When we are facing an existential threat such as the potential detonation of a city, none of those things matter.
If it takes months of fighting, including casualties, and a sharp rise in oil prices and a dip in the stock market, then that’s what it will take. Democrats, their friends in the media and the isolationists on the right want the president to cut and run. Doing so would ensure that Iran will procure nuclear weapons in a very short time period. If you think Iran holds leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and the Middle East now, how would we be able to stop them, once they had nukes in their arsenal?
This is the one last opening we have to rid the world of the threat of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon. Stop worrying about the stock market, oil prices or other short-term setbacks. You can’t win a war that way. If Iran were to get a bomb and use it against an American city, all of those other matters will suddenly seem as trivial as they truly are in comparison.