My Position on The Iran War
There's no such thing as an "ideal" war. So we must adjust our expectations accordingly.
I generally believe that there's room for the U.S. to use military power to promote our values and ideals — under limited conditions.
(What about our “interests”? Because I think ideals and interests are inextricably intertwined, I can’t separate the two in my analysis. An intervention might advance short-term interests — such as degrading Iran’s military capabilities — but be at cross purposes with our values and ideals, and that’s a non-starter for me).
The question is what those limited conditions should be. I've said in the past that one such condition is a regime killing its own citizens en masse.
In Iran, that condition was met — at least 7000 people and likely many more were killed during the recent protests, according to the leading human rights documenter Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). But other conditions were not met, not even close. There's clearly no plan for the day after and no vision for who should replace the top rung of Iranian leaders who were assassinated. Trump admitted that the initial strikes were "so successful it knocked out most of the candidates... Second or third place is dead." This is laughable and shows the lack of seriousness with which this operation was planned and conducted.
Intention and motivation matter. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's remarks — as well as similar remarks from top Republicans like Tom Cotton and Mike Johnson — suggest that the U.S. was dragged into this war at least in part because of Israel's determination to attack, regardless of how diplomatic negotiations were proceeding (and they were proceeding relatively well). Going to war at the behest of Israel — and with Israel — is not a good thing. Israel's policy in the Middle East is to promote weak, pliant regimes and to sow chaos so that Israel's regional dominance can remain unchallenged. In other words, Israel does not want to see a proud, unified, more democratic Iranian state emerge from this conflict. They want to prevent that outcome.
If a proud, unified, more democratic Iranian state could emerge from this war, then I'd be more sympathetic but there are few if any signs that the U.S. is pushing for this, based on the incoherent jumble of justifications that emerge in the statements of top American officials. Ayatollah Khamenei was a mass murderer who directly contributed to the killing of more than 500,000 Syrians during the civil war there, and no one should lament the fact that he's gone. But that's different than saying that whoever replaces him will be better. And that’s different than saying that we even have an idea of who can or should replace him, which we clearly don’t.
Similar to the Venezuela operation which didn't usher in anything resembling a more democratic outcome for the people of Venezuela. Put simply, the Trump administration doesn't have a humanitarian bone in its body and doesn't care about supporting democracy abroad. It's about exerting U.S. power divorced from any sense of moral constraint. The dominance is the point, where my argument has always been — including in my book The Case for American Power — that American dominance should be at the service of clearly defined values and ideals.
