Problem Acknowledged. Attempts to deal with it engaged. Now what?

Bombing Iran was the Smart Thing to do. Let's Hope it Works

Photo by Felipe Albertella on Unsplash

In January 2024 I wrote a Substack post entitled "It's Iran, Stupid" in which I opined that it was time for the US to defecate (I'm trying to work on my language.) or get off the pot. I stated a belief that failure to deal with Iran was basically the same as not being involved in the Middle East at all and that the US should either commit to direst action against Iran or leave the region entirely.

Clearly, our current POTUS agrees and he's decided to stay involved in the region. Given the strategic importance of the Middle East that decision is probably the right one.

We'll see what comes next. I can tell you this much though: We've earned some respect from our enemies for this. They have to honor the threat when the US takes exception to something they have done. Trump is not Obama paying bribes to Iran to achieve an agreement that Iran had no intention to honor. There have been consequences.

And as the Ayatollah sits in his bunker he has to deal with a new reality: That the Americans are no longer scared to strike. That Iran will face more than some easily circumvented sanctions if they do not comply.

And yes, that's rough. War is a method of achieving political goals by force. International politics is about what's best for the country one represents, not for "the world". A nuclear armed Iran is a threat to not just Israel but to the US. Trump just gave an order that resulted in deaths. Wars are fought by killing people. That hasn't changed since the days of Ancient Assyria. We’ve just invented ways of killing each other faster.

Trump may also have saved hundreds of thousands of even millions of lives, both American and Israeli. We’ll never know for sure, but that's the way I’d bet.

I'm not a Never Trumper. I voted for the man. But that was more because I know where movements to declare all White people as racist and anything Democrats regard as “ were likely to lead as opposed to anything I liked about Trump himself. Even most of what he has achieved that I agree with has been accomplished with methods that make me queasy. I'm not his biggest fan either.

He got this one right though. Iran and its genocidal language needed to be dealt with before it could carry out its threats.

I don't know how effective the bombing was. I’ve seen video footage of some pretty impressive explosions but I have no way of evaluating what that kind of explosion would do to a target deep underground. I hope it worked. We’ll know more at some point I suppose although we'll probably never know all the details that the government learns. Put bluntly, I'm not certain how much the governments/militaries of the US and Israel know about what the effects of the bombing were. I wouldn't be surprised if the government of Iran were still trying to figure out the extent of the damage they’ve suffered. There are a lot of variables here.

Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, which is thousands of years old and is still taught in US Military academies said this: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” It would appear that both the US and Israel have taken that to heart. Iran lays naked and trembling before the combined might of the US Air Force and the aviation arm of the Israeli Defense Force. Iran’s anti air defenses have been stripped away. Israel was hitting targets in Iran before Iran knew the first shots had been fired. Depending on how the US and Israel define victory, they may have set the table for a quick win.

Of course, that's assuming that the goal is a badly weakened Iran with a nuclear program that has been set years back. I have yet to see any evidence that there is a plan in place that would lead to the Iranians overthrowing their own government. Then again, I didn't see the Hezbollah pager plot or Israeli drones launched from inside Iran coming either so I could be wrong.

I don't know what comes next. I do history not prognostication. But if what happened last night leads to a world where Iran isn't paying proxies to kill Israelis to preserve its own power, if we no longer have to worry about Hezbollah blowing up hundreds of US Marines, if the Houthi rebels run out of missiles to fire at shipping because Iran can't afford to provide them anymore, the world is safer for American interests abroad and that is a good thing. I pray that I’m right.