The great thing about what I suspect is the soon-to-be former Iranian theocracy is that whatever comes next could hardly be any more sclerotic, any more belligerent, any more Islamist, or any less popular with the Iranian people.
As the adage goes, Ya can’t fall off the floor.
In addition, President Donald Trump isn’t the sort of commander-in-chief to be bound by then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell’s “Pottery Barn Rule.” That is, if the U.S. assists Israel in breaking the current Iranian regime, Trump won’t feel compelled to nation-build it back to health. Trump, unlike past American presidents, understands that a military’s job is to break things, not build them back up.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Trump hasn’t broken Iran; Israel has. And whether the American president ultimately decides to help the plucky Jewish state finish the job by dropping a 30,000-pound precision-guided GBU-57 bunker-buster on Iran’s last remaining nuclear facility — its 300-foot-deep Fordow fuel enrichment plant — it won’t change that fundamental assessment. Israel walloped Iran; we mostly stood by and nodded in approval.
As for the Iranian regime, it is teetering. And it carries with it the unmistakable stench of a loser. Indeed, the only reason 89-year-old “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is still alive is because the Israelis have allowed him to live — perhaps as a courtesy to Donald Trump, who yesterday announced that he’d give the regime two weeks before deciding whether the U.S. military will become more directly involved. As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at yesterday’s press briefing:
I have a message directly from the president, and I quote, “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.” He’s been very clear. Iran went for 60 days when he gave them that 60-day warning without coming to the table. On day 61, Israel took action against Iran. And as I just told you from the president directly, he will make a decision within two weeks.
So Iran is on the clock, and “within the next two weeks” doesn’t necessarily mean Trump will take the full two weeks before deciding. Trump wants to give diplomacy one last chance, and he indicated Wednesday that Iran proposed sending a delegation to the White House. The regime, of course, fired off an almost comical denial: “No Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House. The only thing more despicable than his lies is his cowardly threat to ‘take out’ Iran’s Supreme Leader. Iran does NOT negotiate under duress, shall NOT accept peace under duress, and certainly NOT with a has-been warmonger clinging to relevance.”
That last part — the part about Trump being a “has-been warmonger” — is a hoot, isn’t it? I don’t think it’s particularly bold to predict that history will acknowledge Donald Trump as one of the most consequential of American presidents; that he kept us out of ruinous ground wars; and that he favored diplomacy while using American military power sparingly and strategically.
And this is important: Trump’s statement about possibly becoming “more directly involved” doesn’t mean “American boots on the ground,” and the scaremongering on this front is just that — scaremongering. Anyone who suggests that Donald Trump is inclined toward the same “stay the course” nation-building strategy in Iran that cost our nation 4,492 dead, 32,292 wounded, and $728 billion in Iraq two decades ago and ruined the presidency of George W. Bush is delusional, or disingenuous, or both.
Of course, the Israelis will also have a say in Iran’s governing future, and their patience with the main mullah has all but worn out. After an Iranian missile strike on a Beersheba hospital, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had this to say: “Khamenei openly declares that he wants Israel destroyed — he personally gives the order to fire on hospitals. He considers the destruction of the state of Israel to be a goal. Such a man can no longer be allowed to exist.”
Deep within his 2020 book Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, former Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster summed things up as follows: “It is possible that the current Iranian regime can evolve such that it ceases its permanent hostility to the United States, Israel, its Arab neighbors, and the West.” That assessment now seems well past its due date.
More prescient, I think, is this assessment: All bad things must come to an end. And the Iranian regime is a very bad thing.
