Iran now presents Donald Trump with the first real-time crisis of his presidency, illustrated in stark terms Tuesday when Iran launched ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases hosting U.S. and Iraqi troops. And not surprisingly, he is handling it in a way that embodies all the worst elements of his management of national security issues. Unfortunately, Trump also seems to have abandoned one of the more positive aspects of his approach to foreign policy: a reluctance to get into new and unwinnable conflicts in the Middle East.
A major war with Iran is by no means inevitable. But the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani is a roll of the dice that just might take us there.
The external signs of crisis mismanagement are already apparent. The president’s threats against Iran have inflamed an Iranian public already at fever pitch against the United States. His promise — twice — to attack Iran’s cultural sites should it respond violently against the United States was not only a provocation, it was also a potential war crime. Trump belatedly recognized that, but no statement did as much to undermine the American narrative that it’s at war with the Iranian regime, not the Iranian people.
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Compared to Obama-Biden, Warren and Sanders, and all of the other Iran apologists in the Democratic Party -- Trump actually looks good. "Maximum pressure" is certainly working, and now the Trump administration has reestablished a deterrent capacity long missing during the Obama years. So far, Iran is the one doing the blinking. However, the Democrats and their allies in the media are the best hope the Iranians have for removing Trump next January. Their strategy is simple: Print that all Trumps actions in the Middle East seem disastrous and hope the public will buy into it. But from the perspective of America's allies in the Middle East, Trump's actions are necessary. That is, if the US wants to maintain close relations with its Middle East allies. When Trump says that Iran will never be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, America's allies believe that he means business. The same is not true for the Democrats. Remember Russia and China are playing a very coy game in the Middle East. They are both keeping in very close contact with all sides. The US simply cannot pursue the same policy as Russia and China. Washington has been (and so far remains) an essential strategic partner to both the Sunni Arab states and Israel. If however, Washington attempts a remake of the Obama-Biden policy, China and Russia will make even greater strides into the Middle East. In fact, that's precisely how both Moscow and Beijing are positioning themselves. Unlike the US Democratic party, Trump is moving strategically. He correctly assessed that the JCPOA was nothing more than a flawed vehicle which could only lead to regional nuclear proliferation. This is reality. The Iran nuclear deal was nothing more than an exercise in appeasement. It was one of the worst foreign policy decisions in the history of the post-WWII era. Iran is a revolutionary state without any inhibition toward clearly stating its aims. To allow such a state to maintain an industrial level nuclear infrastructure -- legally and within this current decade -- was not only the height of folly, it smacks of gross negligence and malfeasance in office. But this is the foreign policy legacy of the Obama-Biden administration, its professional cadre, and its liberal institutional admirers. Talk of mismanagement indeed: Compared to Obama, Trump has reestablished sound relations with all our regional allies. In the process, years of Democratic Party delusion with respect to Tehran have been rolled-back. So far, so good.
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