War with Iran

Long time readers of this blog will recall that I visited Iran in April 2011.  I loved the country, and I loved the people I encountered. 

I was part of a university alumni group, accompanied by both an American professor and a local guide.  The local guide was not a conduit for government propaganda.  He was proud of his country, but he was well-traveled and sophisticated.  He had harsh things to say about his own government at times.

I am not naïve, I don't think.  I realize that the Iranian government is a destabilizing force in the Middle East.  But I'm also aware that within the government are a number of contending forces -- moderates, hard liners, and Muslim ayatollahs -- and that the urban population in particular is moderate, educated, and relatively Western-oriented in its interests and ideals.

It was another Republican president -- George W. Bush -- who stated proudly, "I don't do nuance."  The present administration seemingly revels in this concept.  President Trump , at least so far as we can ascertain from his public statements and manifold tweets, sees the world in terms of black and white.  Good guys and bad guys.  And for Trump, unlike for even George W. Bush, who is good and who is bad is determined not by foreign policy experts but by what Trump had for dinner that night. 

And by an obsession with destroying any accomplishment of the prior Obama presidency.

Obama had helped negotiate a treaty reducing sanctions against Iran in exchange for various restrictions on Iran's atomic weapons program.  Trump clearly hated the treaty -- not only because it was credited to Obama, but because Iran was detested by Saudi Arabia.  (Trump's infatuation with the Saudis is another question, but beyond the scope of this short essay.)

After grumpily certifying on several occasions that Iran was in compliance with the treaty, he suddenly decided that it was not, and in October 2017, refused to make the certification.  In May 2018, he announced that the United States was withdrawing from the treaty.  Ever since, he has been obsessed not only with reapplying sanctions against Iran, but forcing our increasingly skeptical allies to do the same.

In general, they have not.  They have not because they disagree with the American failure to certify compliance, and because the American (i.e., the Trump) position seemed irrational, arbitrary, and capricious.  Which it was.  Which it is.

American abrogation of the treaty was a shot in the arm for hard liners in Iran, and a setback for moderates who had been running the government under the watchful and somewhat suspicious eye of Ayatollah Khamenei.  Iran reacted cautiously but firmly in increasing the production of fissionable material. 

In April 2018, John Bolton was named National Security Adviser.  Since the Bush administration, Bolton has pushed for war with Iran, apparently with the goal of replacing the government with one more to his liking.  Step by step, since becoming Security Adviser, Bolton has goaded Iran into doing something that would provide a pretext for an American attack.  As CUNY Professor Peter Beinart writes on-line for The Atlantic:

By May [2019], events were bearing out the Pentagon’s fears. “In private meetings,” the Times noted, “military officials have warned the White House that its maximum-pressure campaign against Iran is motivating … threats to United States troops and American interests in the Middle East.” The former Bush-administration official Kori Schake observed that “every single European government believes that the increased threat we’re seeing from Iran now is a reaction to the United States leaving the Iran nuclear agreement and trying to force Iranian capitulation on other issues.”

But in any event, Bolton now has what he has wanted all along, a pretext for war.  Iran shot down an American drone.

Trump says the drone was over international waters in the Gulf.  Others claim it was flying over Iranian territory.  Ordinarily, our allies, our population, and I myself would give the administration the benefit of the doubt -- certainly over an increasingly hostile Iranian government.

But analogous to the boy who cried wolf too often, Trump has lied far too often.  He lies and he lies and he lies.  He lies about trivial matters.  He lies when the lies are clearly easy to disprove.  He lies as a matter of personal policy.  It isn't clear to me that "Truth" has any meaning to him other than "whatever is useful, or even just pleasant, to me at the moment."

But we've never insisted on truth as a grounds for attacking another country.  We remember all too well the second Bush's trumped up excuse for attacking Iraq.  If Trump decides this is a useful time for a war with Iran, war it will be.  He will ignore international law.  He will ignore Congress.  He will ignore cooler heads in the military and in his own administration.  Professor Beinart warns:

For more than a century, this false innocence has been a feature of every unprovoked American war. And it is this false innocence that Americans must relentlessly challenge if they wish to avoid war with Iran now.

I suspect that the days are past when we had any control over a president's military actions.  Trump will go with his gut feelings.  And we will live with the consequences of his gut feelings long after Mr. Trump has retired, and has slinked off to play golf at Mar-a-Lago.