Trump Bombed Iran. What’s Next?

If you have followed my work over the years, you know that foreign affairs are, to put it mildly, not my area of focus. There are a couple of reasons for that. One of them is that I’m just not that interested in what other countries are doing. The other is that, to my mind, focusing intently on the affairs of foreign nations comes with a significant opportunity cost. For every hour we spend talking about, for example, the mullahs in Iran — who have supposedly been on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons for many years now — we aren’t talking about catastrophic threats that directly impact the lives of American citizens every single day. And these are threats that we can easily solve, if we choose to do so.

To give just one example, yesterday a magistrate judge ruled that Kilmar Abrego Garcia can be released from jail pending his trial. This is the illegal alien and suspected MS-13 gang member whose alleged crimes include human trafficking and wife-beating, who Democrats have turned into a hero of their party. Now that Democrats have succeeded in bringing him back here from El Salvador, and if this judge gets her way, he’ll be free to roam the streets of Nashville, Tennessee — or anywhere else he wants to go.

And yet, despite this very direct infringement on our national sovereignty — and many, many more cases like it — no bunker-buster bombs were dropped on MS-13 strongholds in Mexico or Central America over the weekend. We haven’t sent the military to go destroy the Mexican gangs and cartels that have terrorized this country for too long. Yes, it would clearly advance our interests to eliminate these threats immediately, using overwhelming military force. But we haven’t done it. And there doesn’t appear to be any plans to do it.

Instead, as you’ve heard by now, on Saturday the Trump administration launched a targeted military strike against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Which means that, for better or worse, Iran is not just a matter of foreign affairs anymore. The United States is involved.

And now, very explicitly, the president is also talking about regime change in Iran.

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The defense for that post will be that Trump is trolling, or that he’s saying something extreme as a means to gain an advantage in negotiations, or that he means that the Iranian people should rise up and create their own regime change. Any of those interpretations could be true. But whatever his point, we absolutely cannot get involved in a regime change war. It’s not up to the United States to decide what sort of regime rules over Iran. Least of all is it our job to “make Iran great again.” The greatness of America is our only concern.

Of course, I have no doubt that if Trump did decide to launch a war for regime change in Iran, a certain sizable portion of right wing influencers will discover that actually they’re big fans of Dick Cheney style foreign policy after all. We’ve already seen these pivots happening in certain corners.

Now, did the attack on Iran actually benefit the United States? That’s the only question that matters. And any reasonable person has to admit that there are coherent arguments on both sides.

The argument in favor of military intervention is that, very soon, Iran could, they say, build a nuclear weapon. That’s according to director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has testified that, “[Iran] can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly.” She also said, in the same statement, that they have no intelligence indicating that Iran actually is building a nuclear weapon. But she said that they could. And this is a country that openly despises the United States, as many Islamic countries do. They’ve waged proxy wars against us in the Middle East. Often through intermediaries, they’ve launched rockets at our soldiers.

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The pro-intervention crowd says that the Iranian regime is evil and murderous, which of course it definitely is. As I said before, the whole regime can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. Many of them are already there, no doubt. So that was the argument in favor of military intervention — this is an evil regime that is responsible for the deaths of Americans, and could build, or maybe is building (depending on who you’re listening to) a nuclear weapon. That’s the case that was made by that side of the argument. And it’s the case that ultimately won out. It’s also, I think, wrong.

There are some serious problems with this line of argument. Problems that led me to think that it’s a bad idea for America to get involved. And I still think that. I’m not going to change my position now just because Trump did the thing that I initially opposed. I’m not going to triangulate and try to find the position that will be most popular or whatever. I’m just going to tell you what I think, which is all that I ever do. I can’t promise you that I’ll always be right. I’ve been wrong about plenty of things. But I can promise you that whatever you hear me say, I’m saying it because I believe it to be true. And that’s all I can do in this case. The chips will fall where they may.

So what are the problems with the pro-intervention argument, the argument that did in fact win the day?

Well, first of all, as has been pointed out many times and rightly so, this is all very eerily similar to the lead up to the Iraq War. It’s not exactly the same. It’s 20 years later and a different country. But the similarities are striking enough to give any thoughtful person a reason for pause, at a minimum.

More importantly — and as was the case with Iraq — when it comes to the question of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, we unfortunately have no reason to trust the U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment one way or another. They’ve lied so often, and so consistently — on everything from Iraq to the COVID lab leak to the fact that they bombed civilians during the pullout from Afghanistan — that no one can trust them.

In fact, even the president of the United States doesn’t seem to trust his own director of national intelligence. Watch:

After this clip was posted online, a lot of people claimed that the reporter may have twisted Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony somehow. But whatever your position is on that point, it doesn’t matter. It’s evident from this clip that the president of the United States does not have any confidence in his intelligence community. You heard him say that they’re wrong about this extremely important point about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. So why exactly should we listen to anything they say? Who can we trust on the question of Iran’s nuclear capabilities?

The other issue is that, like Iraq, Iran has not launched any kind of recent, direct attack on the United States. That doesn’t, in itself, mean we’re not justified in launching a preemptive strike. It doesn’t mean we have to wait to get hit first. But it does make you wonder if this attack was launched primarily for America, or primarily for the sake of, and at the behest of, a country other than America. Namely, Israel. In this case, there are very good reasons to be concerned that we got ourselves involved in a military conflict for Israel’s sake and not our own. And that concern becomes especially pronounced when you listen to the kinds of things that our government officials are saying.

For example, here’s State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce just a few weeks ago:

It goes without saying that anyone who thinks a foreign country is greater than our own should be barred from government service for life. This is disqualifying in about a million different ways. You can claim she’s being taken out of context, or that she didn’t mean to say what she said. And those are all possibilities — even though her job, as spokeswoman, is to speak clearly. But to my ear, it sounds a lot like she just said that America is, “the greatest country on earth next to Israel.” And watching footage like this — along with the relentless warmongering on cable news — it’s hard not to become more than a little cynical about our reasons for attacking Iran, and whether “America First” was really the guiding principle at play here.

For my part, I have a position that may not satisfy most people. I don’t agree with the people claiming that Trump just betrayed his base and started World War III. At the moment, World War III is an unlikely outcome. In part, that’s because no other nation is rushing to Iran’s defense. Iran is not particularly popular, as it turns out. And a lot of their neighbors in the Middle East, aside from Israel, don’t want them to have nuclear weapons either.

Additionally, it’s hard to justify the claim that Trump betrayed his base when he has been saying for like 15 years that Iran can’t have nukes. That’s a point that the pro-intervention side brings up a lot, and they’re right. I concede it.

To be sure, if this conflict turns into a years-long quagmire that costs billions of dollars and countless American lives, then Trump will have betrayed his base and sunk his presidency in the process. But if this is a one-and-done deal, as he initially indicated, it would be pretty consistent with how he operated in his first term and handled similar sorts of situations. But again, it’s hard to come to any definitive conclusions at the moment.

Yesterday, Iran’s Parliament voted to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important shipping routes for oil in the world. But it remains to be seen whether Iran’s so-called “supreme leader” will follow through on that vote, which would almost certainly result in more U.S. military action.

On the other hand, I definitely don’t agree with the neocons throwing a parade right now, raising the “mission accomplished” banner, and declaring that the Middle East has been fixed and a golden age of peace is upon us (those were Dave Rubin’s words, paraphrasing slightly). What they’re claiming, essentially, is that all it took was a few bombs to fix everything. What? The first million bombs didn’t do it, but the last 10 did the trick? Again, it’s way too early for those kinds of proclamations. Literally 12 hours after the US dropped its bombs, there were legions of commentators on X claiming that the decision has already been vindicated and those who warned against the move have been exposed as fools. 12 hours later. Because of course, if a military intervention doesn’t result in anything bad within the first 12 hours, that means it won’t result in anything bad at all, ever. I’m not making a straw man here. Social media is full of this kind of gloating and gaslighting, mere hours after the initial assault.

Again, there are major problems with this line of thinking. In particular, there are reports now that the strike didn’t remotely affect Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. Both JD Vance and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency have said we don’t know precisely where Iran’s uranium stockpile is. And there’s a good reason for that. Days before the U.S. bombed Iran, commercial satellite images show that trucks appeared at two of the sites we hit, most likely to haul away some of the uranium. If that’s the case, then we haven’t “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, as Trump said. We’ve set it back, but we haven’t obliterated it. And on top of that, of course, these attacks didn’t destroy sleeper cells that we’re told Iran likely has in this country, nor did they eliminate Iran’s ability to launch missiles at U.S. troops in the region, or strike Israel.

In other words, this attack probably won’t turn into World War III. But the chances that it makes the situation in the Middle East more chaotic, fractured, and therefore dangerous, seem relatively high to me. That’s the way these things have played out for the past 40 years at least. It’s certainly not unreasonable to worry that a pattern established over four decades may continue.

X is full of right wing influencers now declaring that their fellow conservatives who have these kinds of concerns aren’t “real MAGA.” Even though these are the very concerns that Trump ran on, and that many people in the America First movement — like myself, and millions of others — have expressed for years and years.

Meanwhile John Bolton, David French, Nikki Haley, Lindsey Graham, Mike Pence and Jonah Goldberg all support the attack. In fact, it’s the first thing Trump has done this term that they like. Are they real MAGA now?

Also, taking a few steps back, there seems to be a real disconnect here. The same people declaring that Iran is a joke — friendless, isolated, impotent — and therefore we don’t need to worry about any reprisals from them, were the ones telling us for the past two weeks that Iran is a clear and present danger to the United States. How dangerous could they have ever really been if a few days of bombs has rendered them as threatening as a blind, limbless tortoise lying upside down on the pavement? Yes, if Iran had a fully functional ICBM, that would change things. But no one is even claiming Iran was actively in the process of building a nuclear weapon, or had established the capacity to launch one, much less that they had any plans to launch one at the United States.

Now, how will this all play out in the end? What will the final analysis be? Well, the truth is that if you’re excited for the opportunity to thump your chest and say “I told ya so,” you’re going to have to wait several years. That’s how long it will take for us to know, for certain, whether Trump’s decision on Saturday night was ultimately right or wrong. Maybe in the end it will turn out that Trump’s actions made America less secure in the short term but more secure in the long term. Or maybe the reverse. Or maybe it will be a disaster in the short and long term. Or maybe it will prove to have been a military masterstroke with no significant downside at all. The realist in me says that final scenario is the least likely, but it is possible. If that’s how it works out, I’ll be happy to admit I was wrong.

I do think Trump has earned a lot of trust on these kinds of issues. His foreign policy instincts have been excellent so far. But that just means he gets the benefit of the doubt, within reason. It doesn’t mean he’s infallible, obviously. He can be wrong. I think he is wrong on this one. And anyone who says that conservatives aren’t allowed to disagree with Trump, or voice their concerns when they disagree, is not a serious person. And is also not a good American. In America, we can disagree with our elected leaders. And say so. Loudly.

Then there’s the Israel of it all. Again, my take is not satisfying to any faction. No, Israel is not the Great Satan who can be blamed for all of the world’s ills. But I also don’t think it’s our responsibility to bail them out or enter into all of their conflicts. And I don’t think there’s any question that Israel deliberately backed Trump into a corner on Iran. They launched this attack on Iran while knowing that they didn’t have the capability to finish the job. And on this point — although I thought Trump’s address on Saturday night was fine for the most part, there was one part that stood out, and not in a good way. Watch:

President Trump said, “We’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.”

This is probably a more revealing statement than Trump intended. Trump’s own intelligence community said Iran wasn’t actively building a bomb. That’s what Tusli Gabbard told Congress. Then Israel launched an attack anyway. Our State Department responded right away with a very cold statement disavowing any involvement. A little over a week later, we dropped the bombs. And now the president is talking about “erasing” a “threat to Israel.” I can’t interpret that chain of events as anything but Israel dragging us into something that we didn’t initially want to be involved in. This shouldn’t need to be said, but erasing threats to Israel is not America’s job. Period. America should be acting in its own interests to protect its own people. It should never do a single thing that harms its own people and its own interests, for the sake of some other country’s people and interests.

I’m no peacenik hippie when it comes to using force. I just think force should only ever be used by America for America. I’d love to see the military launch ruthless, devastating strikes on the drug cartels that have killed thousands of Americans for decades. Again: why haven’t we done that yet? Someone in power should explain that to us, as slowly as possible, so there’s no confusion. Mexican drug cartels have killed more Americans than the Iranians ever have, directly or indirectly. And the criminal invasion of our country is a more direct and immediate and serious threat to us — to our country — than Iran’s nuclear program ever was. I think there’s no doubt about that. So why don’t we use our military to neutralize that threat? Is it because Mexico is a sovereign country? Well, so is Iran. So are all the Middle East countries where we’ve been meddling for decades. So again: why haven’t we bombed every compound and killed the entire leadership structure of every cartel?

If this attack on Iran was the right call, it will be because it made Americans safer. If it proves to be the wrong call, it will be because it made Americans less safe.

This is the sole consideration that will determine whether Trump’s decision was right or wrong. The safety and prosperity of Israelis has no bearing on the final verdict. If a choice makes Americans safer but Israelis less safe, it’s the right choice. If vice versa, it’s wrong.

At the moment, the messaging from the Trump administration isn’t encouraging on this point.

Here’s JD Vance explaining why this particular intervention in the Middle East is a good idea:

I like JD Vance a lot, but this answer misses the point, in my view. Barack Obama’s problem wasn’t his IQ. Neither was Bill Clinton’s. And you can debate about George Bush’s IQ, but there’s no doubt that the people controlling the foreign policy in his administration were extremely intelligent. This is not a matter of intelligence. Sometimes very smart people will start very stupid wars. And in pretty much every case, they’re making the same mistake. They think they can control variables that they actually know nothing about.

That’s part of the problem with waging foreign wars. It’s a bit like trying to control the entire economy with Soviet-style price controls. Things get complicated, very quickly. And having a good leader — or a smart one — doesn’t necessarily insulate you from all of the potential consequences, once you go down that path.

I truly hope and pray that Trump is vindicated, because that will mean that America is vindicated. As long as he’s the leader of our country, I want him to be right about everything he does, even if it means that I’m wrong. But he’s not going to be right about everything because he’s a human being, not God. I’m afraid this is one of those times, but only time will tell.

In the meantime, whatever side you’re on — pro-bombing Iran, or against it — the fact remains that we’ve now dropped the bombs. We’ve done more than Israel had any right to expect us to do — and we’ve done it, I believe, in defense of their national security rather than our own.

Now it’s time to take a look at what’s happening within our borders. We should apply the same level of decisiveness to solving those problems — including military intervention if necessary — and leave other countries to handle their own affairs.

This is not just a platitude. This country is in a state of internal crisis, on multiple fronts. Our national sovereignty has been destroyed. We’ve been overwhelmed by an unsustainable flood of third world immigrants. Our cities are dysfunctional cesspools. Our education system is a disaster, and only getting worse. Our birthrates are plummeting. And all of this has happened while our leaders have been more concerned with starting, or getting involved in, or funding, or engineering, one foreign conflict after another, in one godforsaken corner of the world after another.

This cannot continue. That’s why we say America first. It’s why I believe it, down to my very core. It’s not just a slogan. It’s the only way forward. We need to turn our focus back to our own country, or we won’t have one for much longer.