On Tuesday, pro-Iran terrorists gathered by the hundreds to launch an assault on the American embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. They did so in response to American attacks on Kata’ib Hizbollah, an Iranian-backed terror outlet with significant reach in Iraq and Syria. After American Marines arrived via helicopter on Wednesday, and with the terrorist group leadership telling its minions to pull away from the embassy, the siege came to an end — and Iraq’s embattled prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, committed to considering legislation that would push American troops to leave the country.
President Trump responded to the attacks strongly, not only deploying additional forces to defend the embassy, but declaring that there would be no second Benghazi — a reference to the disastrous 2012 incident in Libya in which terrorists stormed the U.S. embassy there and murdered the American ambassador, among others. The Obama White House subsequently blamed the terror attacks on a little-known YouTube video.
Many in the media, naturally, played the Baghdad assault as a negative referendum on Trump’s Iran policy. Many of the same members of the media who defended Obama’s Libyan war and then justified the Benghazi abomination now suggest that Trump was too harsh on the Iranians, and hurt their feelings — and that’s what has led to Iran’s increasing militancy.
But this ignores reality and history: Iran was responsible for the deaths of thousands of troops in Iraq over the past 15 years, has been the world’s leading terror sponsor for decades, and has harassed and attacked American interests ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. What’s more, Iran was massively emboldened in its regional aggression by Obama administration-era appeasement — it turns out that signing checks to the Iranians and opening their export markets to foreign dollars allowed Iran to expand its regional ambitions to Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, the Gaza Strip, and Iraq in new and powerful ways.
Iran has lashed out in increasingly violent ways recently because their leadership hopes that violence will sway the United States to pull out, or to return to the appeasement strategy — or hopes that possibly, they can swing public opinion against Trump by prompting conflict, thus bringing a surrender-minded Democrat to the White House.
So, what happens next?
Trump has two real options. First, he could continue to take a hardline stand, ensuring that American assets in the region are protected and retaliating against Iranian militias. This seems like Trump’s preferred stand at the moment — that’s why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has stated there will be no troop drawdown or embassy evacuation. In order to make this standard work, Trump will have to stick to the lines he draws, which means no more calling back bombers in mid-air after deploying them to strike Iranian targets.
Second, Trump could withdraw. There are some on the Right who presumably would like to see Trump pull out of the Middle East at the first available opportunity. That philosophy is driven by a tendency toward isolationism, the belief that the United States ought to redeploy out of the area unless directly threatened. This strategy has been historically popular with the American people, but does create greater threats down the road — vacuums don’t stay vacuums for long, and Russia, Iran, and China are eager to fill any gap left by the United States to their own benefit.
The great danger for Trump lies in vacillating between these two positions. Vacillation is seen as weakness by the Iranian regime, which is why the Iranian leadership has already declared Trump’s threats empty. Obama demonstrated to the world that his threats were empty, and America’s enemies took advantage. The more credible Trump’s threats, the less often he’ll have to enforce them — and the less grand the response will have to be. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in foreign policy, and an ounce of deterrence is worth a pound of reactivity. Trump seems to get that. So does his team. That’s why Baghdad won’t be Benghazi.