June 20: This is getting serious

In which, escalation is the name of the game in the Middle East, “No Kings” flops, and political violence claims lives in Minnesota.

Iran vs. Israel: This is getting serious

יורם שורק, Mehr News Agency, Avash Media, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Last week, I deployed the tagline of “chronology and context” to help us cut through the media noise surrounding the riots in LA. In the case of the air war over the Middle East right now, chronology and context matter a great deal.

The chronology is pretty straightforward.

Back in April, President Trump gave Iran 60 days to essentially negotiate the end of their pursuit of nuclear weapons, but negotiations had foundered over Iran’s insistence it would not give up uranium enrichment. As the sixty days wound down, President Trump moved bombers and other military assets to the region while Israel started loudly threatening to strike Iran if negotiations failed.

Last week, the IAEA found Iran in violation of non-proliferation standards and European powers joined President Trump in urging Iran to back off its enrichment redline lest Israel strike.

Iran refused.

Israel struck.

It appears Israel concluded that they couldn’t hope for a better window of opportunity to strike at Iran’s nuclear program as they have successfully done in both Iraq and Syria. Unlike Syria and Iraq, however, Iran had both the capability and willingness to strike back, and did.

The two have been going back and forth all week with losses mounting on both sides.

Despite the reciprocal exchanges of missiles, Israel clearly has the upper hand. Initial strikes wiped out most of the IRGC’s top brass, nuclear scientists, and air defenses, giving the Israeli Air Force (IAF) almost carte blanche to hit Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and the missile launchers targeting Israel.

Having established air superiority in just 72 hours, Israel began lobbying the Americans to join the fight in order to finish the job. But what job are we finishing? Ending Iran’s nuclear program? Ending the Ayatollah? Regime change?

This is where context is very, very critical.

The question of “finishing the job” and Trump’s own “unconditional surrender” rhetoric have contributed to confusion among American conservatives especially who generally support the President, but are very skeptical about engaging in a Mid East war. Indeed, most Americans feel this way.

Trump, himself, really doesn’t seem to want to go to war either given his urging Iran to negotiate and the two week decision window he gave himself to make that decision. Israel, meanwhile, really wants the US to get involved sooner than later.

Given the context of this week plus bad memories of Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be reasonable to conclude that America should not be beholden to Israel and jump into a fight not of its own choosing. However, the events of this week plus Iraq and Afghanistan would be a very incomplete picture.

For over 40 years Iran has not only positioned itself in opposition to the US diplomatically and ideologically, but has actively sought to do harm to the US, and it has succeeded on numerous occasions often by wielding its regional proxies. Additionally, Iran has routinely out bargained and outmaneuvered multiple administrations to continue expanding a nuclear program well beyond the scope of energy production. All this while vehemently denouncing and calling for the destruction of the “Great Satan” (America) and the “Little Satan” Israel. This isn’t just Israel’s war with Iran. It’s not even our war with Iran. It’s Iran’s war with us. We’ve been fighting a 40-year gray zone war that Iran initiated, and it has now broken into the open with Israel providing open skies above Iran that can be used to devastate, perhaps permanently prevent, Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon.

That’s the fuller context, and given that context President Trump would be well within the bounds of prudential judgement to leverage America’s “bunker busters” and finish the job. Which job? A limited air war would necessarily have limited objectives, and in this case, “finish the job” would mean destroying Iran’s major nuclear facilities, particularly the enrichment facility at Fordow, which is buried hundreds of feet underground. Yeah, there’s a movie about that:

That’s where things stand: Trump giving Iran a two-week “extension” to reengage negotiations with his finger poised on the trigger while Israel continues pummelling Iranian targets and Iran struggles to respond (In addition to volleying missiles at Israel, Iran’s proxies in Iraq have sporadically targeted US bases). Which way will Trump lean? Regardless, Iran’s theocratic regime is at its most exposed.