Broken Bones, Broken Mullahs

Finally.

A quick programming note: A few weeks ago, I had a relatively serious bike accident and broke a bunch of bones in my right hand and one in my arm. It’s been difficult to type and I find voice-to-text programs incredibly frustrating (though I’ve been heroically filing my regular column at Washington Examiner!) In any event, I’m only going to irregularly send the newsletter until I have use of my right hand back. As always, I appreciate that you guys read me.

This weekend, the United States unleashed a limited precision tactical hit to destroy Iran's nuclear program, launching a handful of 30,000-pound bunker-penetrating bombs on the Fordow facility and 30 Tomahawk missiles at the facilities in Natanz and Isfahan.

We’ll see what happens now. I suspect the scaremongers will be wrong: 1) the mullahs will be neutered and 2) we won’t be pulled into a “regime change” war. Whatever the case, Iran has been at war with us since 1979. Sanctions never worked. Diplomacy never worked. For nearly 20 years, the United States virtually begged Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program to avoid war. Instead, the mullahs continued to enrich uranium at levels that could only mean one thing. There’s really no debate about Iran’s goal of becoming a nuclear power. There’s a reason the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities are built deep underground without any infrastructure for civilian use. Whether Iran was two weeks or two months or two years away is irrelevant. They were never going to stop.

Iran asked for it. Trump delivered:

The policy of the American government through numerous administrations was that Iran could not have a nuclear weapon. Yet, every president before Trump allowed the mullahs to manipulate and blackmail the U.S. Worse. From taking hostages to murdering hundreds of our servicemen to funding terrorism around the world to arming proxy armies across the Middle East to hatching plots against American presidents, Iran never seemed very nervous about U.S. reprisals. For 30 years, Israel, sometimes with the help of the U.S., slowed the progress of the Islamic State.

Even after all of it, the Iranians had still been given an opportunity to make a deal with Trump. But the president saw through the charade perpetrated by Iran with the help of the Washington Blob, legacy media, Democrats, and “noninterventionists” on the Right. The notion that a nuclear agreement was right over the horizon conflicts with every shred of evidence we have over the past three decades. Even after the Israelis wiped out its top generals, launchers, and air defenses, systematically demolishing its military installations with wave after wave of precision strikes, the supreme leader of Iran would still not surrender. Yes, Iran is — or was — interested in becoming a dominant regional power. But this kind of irrationality is also driven by theological imperative.

And, yes, Iran was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons.

Before the US bombing, I wrote on the debate over the timing of Israel's assault. Critics of Trump‘s involvement in the Israel–Iran conflict claim that we’ve been warned for decades that the mullahs are on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon, and yet it never happens. There are many reasons for that, including Stuxnet, which likely delayed it for about two years, the Flame virus, the Stars virus, and, no doubt, other malware. Israel also engaged in old-style sabotage and assassinated numerous leading Iranian scientists.

But even that is beside the point:

Many people have pointed out that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who, we should note, has an ideological aversion to U.S. intervention, told Congress not long ago that the U.S. intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” You’ll notice isolationists have absolute trust in our intelligence services when they tell them what they want to hear.

Less known is that Gabbard also said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was “at its highest levels” and “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.” What do people think that means? It means Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could accelerate the program at any time and quickly approach, or breach, the point of no return.

Of course, the notion that Israel needs to wait for Iran to be hours away from attacking with ballistic missiles to act is suicidal. It leaves the country with zero room for mistakes. Iran has a clandestine program, ensconced deep in the Earth, for a reason. They aren’t marking their nuclear deadlines on calendars.

Mollie and I discussed the war on this week’s You’re Wrong.

We also discuss the history of regime change. In another column, I wonder what “regime change war” mean in simple language? Does it mean, as “non-interventionists” suggest, invading Iran and imposing American democracy on its people? Because, if so, there’s virtually no pushing for it. And I only add “virtually” in case I somehow missed a person of consequence, though it is highly unlikely. Trump, from all indications, is using the threat of the U.S. joining the war to push Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei into surrender. Though taking out Iran’s nuclear program would end the war quicker.

The ideological overcorrection due to the failures of Iraq’s rebuild now has non-interventionists accusing anyone who proposes that it’s better if anti-American dictatorships fall of being “neocons,” perhaps the most useless phrase in our political lexicon.

Forget for a moment that Iran has been an enemy of the U.S. for 45 years. Not an existential threat, no, but a deadly one nonetheless. The non-interventionist is not bothered by the Islamic Republic’s murder of American citizens or crusade for nuclear weapons. Until Khamenei plans to drop Revolutionary Guard paratroopers into San Diego, they don’t think it’s any of our business.

Because of this overcorrection, non-interventionists, both left and right, simply can’t fathom that exertion of American power could ever be a good thing. They now create revisionist histories blaming the U.S. for virtually all the world’s ills.

Also spoke on the regime change topic with Seth Leibsohn.

More here.

Iran is not Iraq

Less than a week before Israel launched its attack on Iran, Tucker Carlson, and other cheerleaders for the Islamic State, warned that the conflict could “easily” lead to a world war in which Russia and China would come to the aid of the Islamic clerics and thousands of Americans would die for the Jewish state. Not one American has perished for Israel thus far, which keeps the historic total at zero.

That hasn’t stopped isolationists, joining progressive Democrats, from engaging in scaremongering about an imaginary “neoconservative” push for a large-scale American invasion and occupation of Iran that will put troops in danger. The specter of another Iraq War is endlessly raised to frighten credulous audiences and those understandably anxious of embroiling the United States in another long conflict.

First off, despite popular rhetoric, we won the Iraq “war.” We annihilated the Iraqi army within weeks. The U.S. could atomize Iran, as well, if it pleases. The decadelong disaster that cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars in Iraq was not a war but a misguided and mishandled social engineering project that was meant to install “democracy” in an Islamic-majority state. And no one has proposed anything of the sort in Iran. Notwithstanding the isolationists’ habit of accusing anyone who believes in wielding American power against our enemies of being a “neoconservative,” there is no appetite for nation-building within either party. That’s good news.

A couple of other somewhat related pre-war columns.

Legacy media are a mouthpiece for terrorists

Greta Thunberg is the embodiment of progressive vapidity

I also highly recommend this piece in Tablet: Can Israel End Iran’s Nuclear Program?

Until next time.