All the Ways Trump’s War on Iran Is Disastrous
Iran’s theocratic dictatorship is murderous and illegitimate and should not last for one more second.
Donald Trump’s war on Iran’s theocratic dictatorship is murderous and illegitimate and should not last for one more second.
A parallel is not moral equivalence, which is why it’s tricky to articulate all the ways Trump’s war is disastrous. That thousands of Iranians have been killed by their government under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s reign means his death is no cause for tears.
But because Trump’s stated objectives are cynical and insincere, his war lacks any legal basis, and his expectations are ignorant of everything history teaches about war’s consequences, we should be disturbed by what follows this initial assault and targeted assassination.
Liberating people from oppression with military force is morally justifiable, if often impractical. When Trump effectively declared war on Iran Saturday, he said to its people, “The hour of your freedom is at hand … When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” But his comments the following day to The New York Times betray that he won’t leave Iran’s governance to its people.
“What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” he said. What he did was to abduct one dictator and allow the vice president to assume the dictatorship, sidelining the pro-democracy opposition leader (but pocketing her Nobel Peace Prize). As Trump told the Times, “Everybody’s kept their job except for two people.”
Before the Venezuelan operation, Trump stated, “They took all of our oil from not that long ago. And we want it back.” For the record, Venezuela did not take America’s oil. And more importantly, Trump’s expressed desire to take it underscored that his objectives have nothing to do with democracy.
The day before the Iran attack, Trump delivered a speech in Texas focused on energy in which he said, “80 million barrels of oil. Think of what that means. Think of a stadium with 80,000 people. Now say 80 million. That’s what we’ve taken. And it’s great for Venezuela, and it’s great for us … Has anybody—has anybody ever witnessed anything so beautiful, so decisive, and so popular with the people of Venezuela?” Although Venezuela’s increased economic cooperation with Trump and released some political prisoners, political oppression continues. According to CNN, “Hundreds of political prisoners are still locked up, according to human rights groups, and many of those released so far have faced restrictions and conditions such as travel bans, periodic court appearances and gag orders.”
Asked who would lead Iran next, Trump said, “I have three very good choices” before saying an overthrow of the government by the Iranian people is “up to them.” In other words, if you Iranians—who lack an organized opposition, armed or otherwise—can take your government, good luck. But in the meantime, I’ll handpick your leaders.
Granted, on Sunday night, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl posted on X: “Pres Trump told me tonight the US had identified possible candidates to take over Iran, but they were killed in the initial attack. ‘The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,’ Trump told me. ‘It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.’”
Whether what’s left of the Iranian government—whose constitution has a process for succession—will let Trump meddle remains to be seen. But neither Trump nor the Iranian government is seeking a transition to democracy. Khamenei’s death is the death of a dictator, not a new birth of freedom.
Khamenei’s death marks the first time the U.S. government has assassinated a head of state since the 1975 Church Committee, which uncovered five such plots, three of which were successful. In 1976, the U.S. ratified an international treaty outlawing the assassination of heads of state, and President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning government involvement in assassinations generally. With slight modifications by his successors, the executive order is still on the books, although often interpreted broadly to justify attacks on terrorist leaders. Trump has now steamrolled these legal precedents without citing any imminent threat or emergency.
Asked on Monday what America’s objectives are, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pointed to Iran’s nuclear program, but offered no imminent threat. Citing Trump’s June attack on Iran, after which the president assured its nuclear program was “obliterated,” Hegseth said, “We precisely took it away. And even then, after that, they didn’t come to the table with a willingness to give it away. So ultimately, those nuclear ambitions, which never ceased, are something that had to be addressed as well.” Set aside that the Iranians were negotiating with the administration when bombing began and take Hegseth’s claims at face value. Iran had an obliterated nuclear program but retained “ambitions” to build back better. Ambitions are not emergencies or imminent threats. The “imminent threat,” according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was prompted by our knowing “there was going to be an Israeli action,” which meant Iran “would immediately come after us.” This is just nonsensical circular logic to wave off any legal constraints.
The treaty banning murder of heads of state and other governmental officials is signed by most of the world’s nations for a reason, as stated in its first article: “crimes against diplomatic agents and other internationally protected persons jeopardizing the safety of these persons create a serious threat to the maintenance of normal international relations which are necessary for co-operation among States.” “Normal international relations” are impossible if a head of state can be murdered whenever another head of state feels like it.
Remember that Barack Obama indirectly ousted two dictators, one in Egypt and one in Libya. Yet Egypt’s brief experience with democracy slid back into dictatorship, and Libya fractured into two rival governments and an array of militias—a reminder that the ouster of a dictator is the relatively easy part. His more promising foreign policy legacy was a negotiated agreement with Iran that contained its nuclear program and subjected it to rigorous inspection, an agreement with which Iran was complying until Trump torched it in his first term. Then, in Trump’s second term, he reopened negotiations with Iran, but when the president didn’t like Iran’s proposals, he murdered its leader. However the war turns out, however awful a human was Khamenei, if we allow assassination to become a tactic that “works,” we will have created a huge disincentive to diplomatic engagement and “normal international relations.”
Trumpian logic is: So what? By showing there are no lengths I’m not willing to go, I’ve created an incentive for other nations to bow. But anyone familiar with Mideast history knows that militarily superior nations are vulnerable to asymmetric attacks. And those attacks eventually come because people in the Middle East have long memories. America has been bedeviled by a terroristic, theocratic, dictatorial Iranian government since 1979 because of a revolutionary movement driven, in part, by festering anger over the American-backed 1953 coup that ousted its prime minister, ended free Iranian parliamentary elections, and undemocratically installed the Shah.
Trump has no capacity for long-range thinking, only narcissistic impulse. I presume if an adviser told him a war against Iran would risk blowback in the next decade, Trump would laugh it off. That’s somebody else’s problem, he would likely say: Terrorism in the future has nothing to do with my presidential power today. Armchair psychoanalysis or neurological analysis of political leaders is inherently flawed. Still, Trump often leaves us with little choice but to conclude that thinking has deteriorated since August of 2015, when he told NBC’s Chuck Todd he would keep Obama’s Iran deal.
After calling the deal “horrible,” Trump acknowledged during his first presidential bid:
I’ve heard a lot of people say, “We’re going to rip up the deal.” It’s very tough to do when you say, “Rip up a deal.” Because I’m a deal person … But I will police that deal. You know, I’ve taken over some bad contracts. I buy contracts where people screwed up, and they have bad contracts … But I’m really good at looking at a contract and finding things within a contract that even if they’re bad. I would police that contract so tough that they don’t have a chance. As bad as the contract is, I will be so tough on that contract.
Eleven years ago, Trump—so proud of being identified as the master of “The Deal”—understood that walking away from a deal had ramifications. Then, once in office, he couldn’t bring himself to enforce an Obama deal. Deals are great, but they must be his.
He hadn’t yet developed what seems to have become a taste for military adventure. Now, the The Atlantic reports:
The president’s past success with a limited strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the summer, as well as last month’s operation that removed Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela, may have convinced Trump that the U.S. military is “an almost biblical force that can accomplish anything,” one Trump adviser told us.
If you believe that, why do deals? That takes work and is not as intoxicating as ordering up a military operation and watching it succeed on Situation Room (or Mar-a-Lago) TV screens.
The unholy matrimony of American military proficiency and Trump’s megalomania produces dramatic content. It does not lead us to policies enabling peace, freedom, and stability. Democracy is not at hand for the Iranian people, nor the Venezuelan people. Assassination should not replace diplomacy. We have no reason to believe cyclical Middle East violence will now end just because Trump wrote another chapter.
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