By Steve Levy
In an earlier column, I spelled out the 12 lessons learned from Trump‘s inconsistent Iranian policy to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. One point declared that you never take your foot off your opponent’s neck when they’re about to be defeated.
But that’s exactly what President Trump did in the early parts of the war against Iran.
Our military operated amazingly in taking out Iran’s top echelon of leaders and destroying its air force and navy. The embargo was strangling Iran’s economy. Our internal intelligence showed that they were perhaps just a few weeks from collapse.
So it was pure governmental malpractice to take America’s foot off the throat of Iranian leadership. But that’s exactly what the president did.
The president had said that the American people would not have the stomach for a long, drawn-out war with its uncertainties. It looks more like a case of Trump himself not having a stomach for this.
A true leader like Churchill would go before the public and make the case that sacrifice was going to be needed to stop this crazy nation from getting a nuclear weapon that it will likely use against the American homeland.
The American people would understand and would be willing to make those sacrifices.
But the case was never made very well.
At the same time that the president was calling this an existential threat, he was declaring he would never put boots on the ground and it will be a mere excursion over within a few days.
It quickly became apparent that oil going over $100 a barrel, or the stock market dropping 1,000 points, or one ship in the strait getting attacked was enough for Trump to put on the brakes.
He put in charge of negotiating a deal with Iran the one official that Iran itself publicly requested — Vice President JD Vance.
Vance is an isolationist and has shown himself to be a weak foreign policy steward. Equally disturbing is his hostility to Israel. He negotiated an outright awful memorandum of understanding that would have given the Iranians hundreds of billions of dollars without guarantees that we would accomplish our initial goal of removing the nuclear dust and preventing any type of Iranian nuclear program going forward.
But after Iran foolishly acted against its own self-interest in violating the ceasefire, it looks like the president is finally catching on that these are a bunch of dishonorable, crazy people who cannot be trusted. He’s finally starting to get it that the only thing they understand is strength.
The best way to keep them from attacking their neighbors or vessels in the strait is to constantly keep them on the defensive.
You could love or hate the neo-cons, but George Bush’s doctrine of going after the terrorists overseas and keeping them on the defensive indeed accomplished the goal of wearing them down and preventing another 9/11 from happening on our shores.
It is remarkable that Trump is still talking about maybe bombing the bridges and the power plants. It appears that our military is now being mobilized to hopefully finish the job. Trump deserves credit for not ignoring the Iranian threat as his predecessors had. They just pushed things off to the next guy. Trump didn’t. But he must follow up with the same resilience he showed in the first days of the conflict.
We urged these strategic sites to be bombed in the early days of the war. It might’ve led to the type of chaos on the streets that would bring about regime change.
But Trump laid off, giving the Iranians a chance to catch their breath. More importantly, it showed a lack of resolve on America’s part, and imparted within the Iranians the belief that they could wait us out.
Trump‘s own actions and words sent a message to the Iranians that he and the American people would not have the stomach to deal with higher gas prices or political volatility as the midterms approached
Had the type of offensive now being undertaken been steadily employed at the outset of this conflict, this war would’ve been over by now and victory would’ve been ours.
By delaying it, Trump has now put us in a position of fomenting the volatility as the midterms are upon us.
Regardless, a true leader must put the long-term interests of the American people first and treat this threat as what it truly is — an existential threat that could lead to the incineration of millions of Americans, were the Iranians to get a nuclear weapon. It looks like the president is finally getting there.
This is the one last opportunity we will have to stop Iran from getting a nuke.
Whether or not we would need to employ ground troops is debatable. But even if we were never to do so, it is pure craziness for us to broadcast that to the Iranians.
Let them fear us.
Let them see that the threat to decimate their bridges and power plants is not just talk.
And most importantly, unleash Israel to do what it does so well — taking out the Iranian leadership.