Andrew L. Urban.
It is not with the confidence of hindsight that I claim to have long wanted to see President Donald Trump pursue the complete destruction of the Islamic Republic of Iran, from the mullahs to the murderous military police aka the IRGC. By the time I gathered enough intellectual momentum in July this year to outline in details what I thought Trump should do, I had for a couple of months growled over my whiskey as news report after news report repeated the to and fro of Trump’s deal making efforts with Iran’s leadership, largely through his envoys.
I had already expressed my frustrations with Trump’s naive attempts at shutting down (and shutting up) Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. For someone so confident of his deal making abilities, I found it utterly bewildering that he let first Putin then the Iranian leadership (whoever was left after the decapitation strikes) fool him. Not once but several times. We are close to a deal, he kept saying over weeks, until it became a joke, like the sign outside an outback pub: ‘Free beer tomorrow’. If nothing else, where was the ‘fool me once ..’ doctrine?
Putin and the Mullahs are the last (dictatorial) leaders with whom any negotiation – for peace or anything else – should be taken seriously. And definitely not repeatedly. Didn’t Trump learn anything from Putin ignoring the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 when he invaded Ukraine in 2024?
That was Trump’s big blunder, not the start of his war against the imminent likelihood of a nuclear-weaponed Iran. As Middle East Insider writes (part of Middle East Forum) “Vice President Vance says the Republican Party lost the House and the Senate on Tuesday because of the war with Iran. President Trump says that is largely true and that he would do it again. Both are right about the cause. The lesson is in the eight months: the voters punished a war the United States left unfinished through the fall, not the decision to fight it.”
Just imagine if Trump had left nuclear-enriched, Israel obsessed Iran alone and some weeks later (as his intelligence advice alerted) Iran struck Israel as it has always promised to do, with a nuclear weapon. And don’t tell me that is a far-fetched notion. No matter what followed, it would always be Trump’s fault. But never mind the blame-game, it is what would follow that would pose the existential risk for Israel and perhaps many more of us.
I haven’t come across any alternative plans from Trump’s critics for starting the war with Iran. None of the many Trump-hating journalists have ever dared offer their preferred course of action after receiving the intelligence warning that Iran was close to making nuclear weapons. That is the real bottom line.