1/4/20
The question of war with Iran is now settled. With President Donald Trump’s decision to authorize the U.S. military to execute Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iranian forces throughout the Middle East, the United States is at war with Iran, whether the White House acknowledges it or not. It’s the equivalent of Iran killing the commander of U.S. Central Command. Without a doubt, Iran will respond to the execution of Soleimani with deadly force. The question will be where and when? Today, the U.S. is at war with a capable and difficult adversary that has options to attack Americans and U.S. interests in unexpected ways around the world. The United States is not tiptoeing into a Middle Eastern quagmire. It is waist deep and sinking. The American entanglement in Iraq did not begin with Donald Trump, although he has made it significantly worse. What is lacking today from the Trump administration’s policy is any sign of a regional strategy for dealing with Iran and the growing American isolation in the Middle East. Now that this war is underway, how do he and his generals plan to fight and prevail against Iran? What are the political and military goals and objectives of American policy? How does this war end?
I cannot imagine how Trump can now achieve his avowed goal of withdrawing from endless wars in the Middle East. A far more likely scenario is that the U.S. military will ask for additional forces in the region to defend existing troops on the ground and to respond to future attacks. From the beginning, the Trump strategy in the region has been naïve and incompetent. The plan to bring Iran back to the negotiation table on nuclear weapons is in tatters. The primary U.S. ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, is led by a murderous tyrant who is fighting a brutal and indecisive war in Yemen with American help. Given Trump’s hostility toward traditional allies in Europe and the general Muslim hostility toward American policy in the Middle East, the U.S. has virtually no possibility of international help in the region. It is noteworthy that no significant Iraqi security forces showed up to defend the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad until the Shiite militants controlled by Iran withdrew from the area. Meanwhile, Turkey pays little attention to Washington and cooperates with Russia to expand its influence in Syria. Does the United States now fight and go deeper into the Middle East or withdraw under Iranian pressure? Given the foreign affairs and national security incompetence of this president, his disregard for professional knowledge and experience and his impulsive decision-making process, I have no confidence that this administration can handle the war they stimulated when they withdrew from the nuclear arms deal with Iran.
