By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, June 20, 2019
In May 2018, the Donald Trump administration withdrew the
United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, popularly
known as the Iran nuclear deal.
The U.S. then ramped up sanctions on the Iranian
theocracy to try to ensure that it stopped nuclear enrichment. The Trump
administration also hoped a strapped Iran would become less capable of funding
terrorist operations in the Middle East and beyond, proxy wars in the Persian
Gulf, and the opportune harassment of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The sanctions are clearly destroying an already weak
Iranian economy. Iran is now suffering from negative economic growth, massive
unemployment, and record inflation.
A desperate Iranian government is using surrogates to
send missiles into Saudi Arabia while its forces attack ships in the Gulf of
Oman.
The Iranian theocrats despise the Trump administration.
They yearn for the good old days of the Obama administration, when the U.S.
agreed to a nuclear deal that all but guaranteed future Iranian nuclear
proliferation, ignored Iranian terrorism and sent hundreds of millions of
dollars in shakedown payments to the Iranian regime.
Iran believed that the Obama administration saw it as a
valuable Shiite counterweight to Israel and the traditionally American-allied
Sunni monarchies in the Gulf region. Tehran assumes that an even more left-wing
American administration would also endorse Iran-friendly policies, and so it is
fishing for ways to see that happen in 2020 with a Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth
Warren, or Joe Biden presidency.
Desperate Iranian officials have already met secretly
with former secretary of state John Kerry and openly with Senator Diane
Feinstein, likely to commiserate over Trump’s cancellation of the nuclear deal
and to find ways to revive the Obama-era agreement after Trump leaves office.
To that end, the Iranians wish to disrupt world oil
traffic while persuading China, Russia, and the European Union to pressure the
U.S. to back off sanctions.
Iran hopes to provoke and embarrass its nemesis into
overreacting — or not reacting at all. If Trump does nothing, he looks weak to
this Jacksonian base of supporters. But do too much, and he appears a
neoconservative, globalist nation-builder. Either way, the Iranians think Trump
loses.
After all, Iran knows that Trump got elected by flipping
the blue-wall states of the Midwest — in part by promising an end to optional
interventions in the Middle East. Accordingly, Iran hopes to embarrass or bog
down the U.S. before the 2020 elections. In Tehran’s view, the challenge is to
provoke Trump into a shooting war that it can survive and that will prove
unpopular in the United States, thus losing him the election.
Iran, of course, is not always a rationale actor. A
haughty Tehran always magnifies its own importance and discounts the real
dangers that it is courting. It harkens back to its role in the 2003–2011 Iraq
War, a conflict that proved that U.S. efforts could be subverted, hundreds of
American soldiers could be killed, public support for war could be eroded, and
a more malleable American government could be transitioned in.
But what worked then may not work now. The U.S. is not
only the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, but soon to become
the largest exporter of energy — and without getting near the Iranian coast.
Likewise, American allies in the Middle East such as Israel are energy
independent. America’s Arab friends enjoy seeing competing Iranian oil all but
off the market.
Time, then, is on the Americans’ side. But it is
certainly not on the side of a bankrupt and impoverished Iran that either must
escalate or face ruin.
If Iran starts sinking ships or attacking U.S. assets,
Trump can simply replay the ISIS strategy of selective off-and-on bombing. The
U.S. did not lose a single pilot to enemy action.
Translated, that would mean disproportionately replying
to each Iranian attack on a U.S. asset with a far more punishing air response
against an Iranian base or port. The key would be to avoid the use of ground
troops and yet not unleash a full-fledged air war. Rather, the U.S. would
demonstrate to the world that Iranian aggression determines the degree to which
Iran suffers blows from the U.S.
Of course, Tehran may try to stir up trouble with Israel
through its Syrian and Palestinian surrogates. Iran may in extremis also stage
terrorist attacks in Europe and the U.S. And it may lie that it has already
developed enough fissionable material to launch a nuclear missile.
But the truth is that America has all the cards and Iran
none in its game of chicken.
Because Iran is losing friends and money, it will have to
escalate. But the U.S. can respond without looking weak and without going to
war — and without ensuring the return to power of the political party
responsible for giving us the disastrous nuclear deal that had so empowered
Iran in the first place.
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