Iran

As we said in our 2017 column, General Mike Flynn’s Only Crime, Flynn’s only crime was being a truth-teller about Obama’s failures. We urge Judge Sullivan to grant attorney Sidney Powell’s motion on behalf of General Mike Flynn, to expose the conspiracy against him and President Trump and, for the government’s egregious conduct in the matter, to dismiss the entire case against General Flynn.

Over the next few days much will be written about West Wing power struggles, but in the end, being right about Taliban perfidy and being out of sync with President Trump’s laudable, but impractical goal of making peace with them, is undoubtedly what got John Bolton fired.

Netanyahu's widening of Israel's war with Iran and its proxies into Lebanon and Iraq — and perhaps beyond — and his acknowledgement of that wider war raise questions for both of us. Tens of millions of Muslims see her as an enemy to be expelled from the region. While there is a cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, the Saudis and Gulf Arabs are temporary allies as long as the foe is Iran. Is this pervasive enmity sustainable? As for America, have we ceded to Netanyahu something no nation should ever cede to another, even an ally: the right to take our country into a war of their choosing but not of ours?

The Iranian threats against Mark Dubowitz and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies show that the Islamic Republic has the intention to conduct terrorist activities in the United States and the recent conviction of Ali Kourani demonstrates it has the capability to launch an attack on American soil at time and target of its choosing.

This week President Donald Trump is sending 500 additional U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia. In this new century, leaders of both parties have plunged our country into at least five wars in the Middle and Near East. None of these wars has produced a victory or success for us. But taken together, they did produce a multitrillion-dollar strategic and human rights disaster. Meanwhile, China gained much from having its great rival thrashing about ineffectually in the forever wars of the Middle East. "Great nations do no fight endless wars," said Trump. Yes, they do. As the British, French, Germans, Japanese and Russians showed in the last century, that is how they cease to be great nations.

In contrast to Kim Jong Un and the North Koreans, the Iranians have an ideology (Khomeinist Islam) that aims to take over the world for their version of Allah and automatically makes them imperialists of the most extreme sort. Who knows how many of their leaders truly believe all the Twelfth Imam, end days mumbo-jumbo, but enough to make it the guiding light of a deranged culture. It's worth paying attention when they shout "Death to America! Death to Israel!" as they have since most of their populace was alive. I am not at all advocating war — "going kinetic" in the parlance — with the Islamic Republic. I'm talking about giving moral support to the Iranian people against a regime of greedy, fascistic religious fanatics that is oppressing them.

The United States is almost immune from the sort of pressures that usually coalesce to dictate, modify, or thwart U.S. decision-making in the Middle East. Such liberation from outside coercion is singularly unusual in the post-war American overseas experience. Trump has some choices with Iran that few other presidents have enjoyed. After considering all the bad alternatives, Trump will likely conclude that the good one is to stay calm as Iran implodes, to not play omnipotent global cop responsible for the safe commerce of those who oppose U.S. withdrawal from the Iran deal, and to not weaken sanctions — and be ready to hit back hard should Iran be so foolish as to kill Americans in international space.

The problem Gabbard presents for Democrats is that she takes positions that split her party, while her rivals prefer to talk about what unites the party, like the terribleness of Trump, free college tuition and soaking the rich. Given more airtime, she will present problems for the GOP as well. For the foreign policy Tulsi Gabbard is calling for is not far off from the foreign policy Donald Trump promised in 2016 but has since failed to deliver. We still have 2,000 troops in Syria, 5,000 in Iraq, 14,000 in Afghanistan. We just moved an aircraft carrier task force, B-52s and 1,000 troops to the Persian Gulf to confront Iran. We are about to impose sanctions on the Iranian foreign minister with whom we would need to negotiate to avoid a war.

How can the U.S. deter Iranian escalation without getting into an unpopular war before the heated 2020 election? It merely needs to persist in the present standoff: Ramp up the sanctions even tighter and ignore pathetic Iranian attacks on foreign ships. If Tehran preemptively attacks an American ship or plane, it will be met by a disproportionate response, preferably one aimed not at civilian infrastructure but at the Iranian military hierarchy, Revolutionary Guard, and theocratic elite. Otherwise, the Trump administration can sit back and monitor Iran’s international ostracism and economic isolation while remaining unpredictable and enigmatic, ready to hit back hard at any attack on Americans.

If war is to be avoided, either Iran is going to have to capitulate, or the U.S. is going to have to walk back its maximalist position. And who would Trump name to negotiate with Tehran for the United States? The longer the sanctions remain in place and the deeper they bite, the greater the likelihood Iran will respond to our economic warfare with its own asymmetric warfare. Has the president decided to take that risk? We appear to be at a turning point in the Trump presidency. Does he want to run in 2020 as the president who led us into war with Iran, or as the anti-interventionist president who began to bring U.S. troops home from that region that has produced so many wars?

Ideology is for children and college professors. The question is how do we use common sense? That sense tells me that Trump has now cleared the way for serious action against the mullahs when they pull another stunt, as we can assume they will. Indeed if they have any brains — and some of them must, even with their berserk belief system — they probably see this too. If I were Iran, I'd be afraid. I'd be very afraid. I might even come to the table. And, needless to say, Trump has no interest whatsoever in a ground war with Iran, as well he shouldn't. That part of the neocon lesson holds. Any action should and would come from the air.

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.

Not even Trump’s opinion should matter most. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress. To justify a new war based on an outdated resolution passed nearly 20 years ago to authorize retaliation against the 9/11 attackers would be an unconscionable power grab by the executive branch that lawmakers should not countenance. Yet time and again, Congress has shirked its constitutional duties. The Democrats in the House have an opportunity to put their money where their mouths are. But maybe they won’t. An Iraq-like war in Iran would go a long way toward accomplishing their main goal: making Donald Trump a one-term president.

If war comes now, it would forever be known as “Trump’s War.” One recalls: Saddam Hussein accepted war with the United States in 1991 rather than yield to Bush I’s demand that he get his army out of Kuwait. Who wants a U.S. war with Iran? Primarily the same people who goaded us into wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and who oppose every effort of Trump’s to extricate us from those wars. Should they succeed in Iran, it is hard to see how we will ever be able to extricate our country from this blood-soaked region that holds no vital strategic interest save oil. And America, thanks to fracking, is no longer dependent on the Middle East even for that.

The possibility that the chief executive might rush or be pushed into such a disastrous war is exactly why the Founders obliged presidents to go to Congress for approval. The Constitution places the power to declare war in the hands of the legislature. Yet modern presidents routinely claim monarchical powers, using the military without proper authority. Legislators often avoid taking responsibility for wars that might turn unpopular. But neither unconstitutional nor irresponsible behavior justifies chief executives doing the same. Trump has proven no more faithful to the Constitution than his predecessors.

Who wants us to plunge back into the Middle East, to fight a new and wider war than the ones we already fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen? Answer: Pompeo and Bolton, Bibi Netanyahu, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Sunni kings, princes, emirs, sultans, and the other assorted Jeffersonian democrats on the south shore of the Persian Gulf. And lest we forget, the Never Trumpers and neocons in exile nursing their bruised egos, whose idea of sweet revenge is a U.S. return to the Mideast in a war with Iran. That, they think, will finally bring an end to the Trump presidency.

After an exhausting two weeks, one is tempted to ask: How many quarrels, clashes and conflicts can even a superpower manage at one time? And is it not time for the United States, preoccupied with so many crises, to begin asking, "Why is this our problem?" During the uprising in Caracas, Bolton cited the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. But according to President James Monroe, and Mike Pompeo's predecessor John Quincy Adams, who wrote the message to Congress, under the Doctrine, while European powers were to keep their hands off our hemisphere — we would reciprocate and stay out of Europe's quarrels and wars. Wise folks, those Founding Fathers.

Taken together, the Bolton-Pompeo threats add up to an ultimatum that any attack by Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, or Iran-backed militias — on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria or the Gulf states — will bring a U.S. retaliatory response on Iran itself. Today, Trump's approval rating in the Gallup Poll has reached an all-time high, 46%, a level surely related to the astonishing performance of the U.S. economy following Trump's tax cuts and sweeping deregulation. While a Gulf war with Iran might be popular at the outset, what would it do for the U.S. economy or our ability to exit the forever war of the Middle East, as Trump has pledged to do?

If President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo are serious about stopping the Iranian Islamist threat to the West, their first order of business should be to stop giving the Iranians American forums from which they can threaten Israel and undermine our policies.

“This is another bold act of presidential leadership in support of one of America’s most important allies, Israel.  The president recognized that Israel’s control of the Golan Heights is the reality, and this is not going to change.  President Trump also sent a signal to Iran that the U.S. will not tolerate it using Syria as a platform to threaten Israel’s security.” Fred Fleitz, President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy.