… he is giving any real thought to the most serious questions on the table …
As a mark of decisive leadership, Donald Trump’s continued waffling over whether the go to war with Iran is creating loads of unneeded upset around the world, in Congress, even inside his own White House and among his voters.
Indeed, this week likely will be remembered more for Trump’s seizure of the spotlight solely to remind us that he is the decision-maker than it will be for any remarkable military or diplomatic achievement. It is a week in which Trump has displayed almost as much disdain for Tulsi Gabbard, his own national intelligence director, and for questioning congressmen as he has for Irani leaders who refuse to knuckle under to demands for immediate “unconditional surrender” to ends never made clear.
Amid polls that show a serious split in support, congressional unease with entering another Middle East conflict with no end goal in sight, and how his own contradictory political statements, Trump is waiting for an answer to become obvious. He just wants to be the president who stopped Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
Despite Trump’s bravado, what is not clear is whether he is giving any real thought to the most serious questions on the table: Will entering the war with bunker-busting bombs even work to stop purification of weapons-grade fuel buried beneath a mountain? Will the U.S. fully engage in a war with an Iran that promises retaliation against U.S. forces? Will we have an achievable goal that will keep conflict limited geographically and in time or is this a repeat of another open-ended war of the type Trump says he always has opposed.
Apart from all other aspects, it is remarkable that Trump is dismissive of the entire military and intelligence establishment to personalize what he sees as a gut decision.
Will a Military Strike Work?
Trump thankfully has deferred all military plans to others, reportedly led not by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Joint Chiefs, but by the regional military commander, and has stripped an aircraft carrier group from China watch to the Gulf as well as aircraft. He has specifically not included Gabbard in various planning sessions, apparently punishing her for an “off-message” video she posted. Trump has claimed he held back Israeli intentions to kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while threatening to do so himself.
It looks as if he has made a decision not yet executed, since Iran is not showing up to beg his forgiveness for working on nukes.
Military and nuclear weapons experts are weighing in on whether a strike on the well-protected centrifuge complex at Fordo can be destroyed even by the huge bombs that only the U.S. has and can deliver by stealth bomber. Israel, which by all accounts has done the hard part of war already by knocking out Irani defenses and destroying a third of missile launch capabilities, wants and expects U.S. partnership, but reportedly is working on a plan for Fordo should Trump keep waiting.
Though Israel damaged facilities at Isfahan, a major nuclear research area, and at Natanz, site of the biggest fuel enrichment, Fordo remains. But bombing Fordo is no guarantee of stopping nuclear weapons work, warns James M. Acton of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in a New York Times op-ed. Though Israel has killed 10 nuclear scientists and a U.S. bomb could interrupt stockpiling of enriched uranium at Fordo, he suggests that destroying Fordo is easier than eliminating scuba tank-sized cylinders in which the fuel is stored. They can be moved, eluding tracking, and hundreds or thousands of workers can replicate the work over the next years.
Trump had withdrawn from the previous Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal, ridiculing his predecessors for their limited practical effect on Iran’s programs. But this attack could produce similar time-limited results.
In any event, military action alone is unlikely to stop future enrichment towards weapons development for an Iran set on having such bombs. The United States and Israel can’t target what they don’t know about, and Iran may have secret facilities beyond the three that have been identified.
Is There an End Goal?
Efficacy aside, Trump also faces significant challenges in Congress, where there are bipartisan concerns about going to war against Iran without agreement on achievable and measurable goals.
As a Just Security article outlines, it is obvious now that Israeli planners perceived a unique window of opportunity to strike Iran while it remained vulnerable, and calculated that Trump would join once the attack got underway. Israeli officials reportedly believed they had a green light for a strike from the Trump administration, and Trump himself has since said that he was fully informed ahead of the strike and supported it. In any case, the Iranians view the United States as complicit in the attack
The Iranian regime was unlikely to capitulate even before these attacks. It would be less likely to do so now when it has little reason to trust that a new deal on less favorable terms will guarantee its survival. It is exactly in this context that the question arises about the end goals. Israel talks openly of regime change, Trump refuses to talk about any goals other than the simplistic bar against Iranian nukes.
Realistically, are we ready to move beyond bombardment of a mountain nuclear factory to commit U.S. troops and resources to remake the Middle East? We didn’t do so in Gaza, and we have now accepted Syrian leadership that arose as members of jihadist groups that we had sought to wipe out. The politics are bewildering. There are a half-million Americans living in Israel, subject to Iran’s increasingly indiscriminate retaliatory strikes, as well as any number of American military bases and aircraft carriers within missile range.
Trump has pushed away European allies and encouraged Russia as a possible negotiating partner in what amounts to little understandable reasoning. Without an off-ramp, conflict could spill over to inflame the entire region, oil prices will spike, shipping will be interrupted, retaliatory violence will spread to other parts of the world. If we kill the ayatollah, double down on all of it.
For all of these reasons, we are seeing a fight brewing in Congress over whether Trump should be seeking the involvement, if not the literal approval of Congress before committing U.S. forces. Democrats have introduced quick legislation to require congressional approval for going to war, though there is no sign that Trump is paying it any attention.
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