Conrad Black - Trump Knows a Durable Peace in the Middle East Hangs on Ending Militant Islamic Leadership of Iran
An
immense cloud of mythology and speculation has instantly arisen in the vortex between
President Trump’s recent statement that he did not wish America to have to
return every two years to deprive Iran of its nuclear military capacity, and his apparently
somewhat contradictory statement that since almost all the American and Israeli
war aims had been achieved, the Iran War could probably soon be wound down.
We have seen
enough of Mr. Trump to know that he does not speak idly or with unintended
predictable consequences, but rather enjoys confusing his opponents, rarely
becoming highly concerned if he confuses his supporters as well. In
general, the president’s opinions on the progress of the Iran war conform to
those of his principal military spokesmen as well as those authorized to speak
for the government of Israel, that the allies are well ahead of their original
schedule and have eliminated 90 percent of Iran’s ability to fire ballistic
missiles and drones.
As even
Muhanad Seloom remarked in Al Jazeera on March 16, on the day the war began,
February 28, Iran launched 350 missiles and on March 14 only 25 and in the same
period, drone launches fell to 75 from 800. This isn’t entirely consistent with
some descriptions of Iranian missile attacks on Gulf states but there is no
possible dispute that the Iranian military capability has been severely
diminished every day.
It is
understandable that the American administration has been imprecise about its
war objectives. This is like the controversy in World War II over President
Franklin Roosevelt’s insistence that the allies required the “unconditional
surrender” of their enemies. It has been alleged that this stiffened the German
and Japanese resolve, even though it was clear to everyone that the withdrawal
from the Axis of Italy was agreed on a basis far short of unconditional
surrender and Italy was soon an ally of the West at war with Germany.
There
appears to be no dispute that the allies’ war aim is to ensure that Iran will
never again threaten the world with nuclear weapons nor continue to bankroll
and supply terrorist organizations. Mr. Trump stipulated that right after his
comment about winding down the war. By normal rational standards, that is no
great sacrifice for Iran to make and is a far remove from unconditional
surrender.
If the
Americans and Israelis were to conclude that they had achieved their war aims
and were effectively unilaterally ending the war by making it clear that if
Iran continued the war after the purported U.S.-Israel ceasefire, the
counterstroke would be overwhelmingly disproportionate, it is almost certainly
the case that Iran would successfully represent this at least to the Muslim
world as victory. Its opponents would have got much the best of the fighting,
but they would have failed to destroy or significantly alter the policy
objectives of the Islamic Republic.
The horrible
tyranny constantly inflicted upon the people of Iran would continue; the
government would resume its plan to arm itself to the teeth with missiles and
relaunch their nuclear military program, and they would’ve made the inaccurate
point that they were capable of shutting down the exportation of oil from the
Persian Gulf to the world. America has substantially overwhelmed Iran’s forces
of intimidation and interdiction in the Strait.
For Mr.
Trump, this would be, as he has stated, an intolerable outcome. So
whatever he means by “winding down the war” having achieved his principal
objectives, it is not what venerable readers will recall when Senator George
Aiken of Vermont advised President Lyndon Johnson to announce that he had won
the war in Vietnam and to leave “by plane and by ship.”
This was on
the mistaken assumption that the war could not be won; it could have been won
by cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail, as Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower
advised, or probably even by President Nixon’s Vietnamization policy
accompanied by heavy American air support when necessary, if this option had
not been foreclosed by the suicidally partisan nonsense of Watergate.
In Iran it
could be that a military faction will be incentivized to overthrow the
theocracy and credibly abandon the ambition to become a nuclear power and the
ambition to export and subsidize terror and particularly to assault the right
of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Any Iranian regime that seized power at
Tehran and throughout the country and plausibly promised such a course
correction, could obtain peace quickly.
It is also
possible that, as in Venezuela, there could be further personnel changes and
what still purported to be the Islamic Republic made credible and enforceable
guarantees of the abandonment of the nuclear program and the promotion of
terrorism. It is possible that the entire corrupt and evil regime could
collapse completely, overwhelmed by military defeat, demoralization,
factionalism, and public hatred. Any of these would be acceptable, but the
George Aiken formula, which Mr. Trump’s opponents are bandying about, is not.
Mr. Trump
knows better than anyone that the elimination of militant Islam from the
headship of one of the Middle East’s most important countries is necessary to
produce a durable peace in the Middle East and alter the world balance of power
in favor of the Western democracies by defeating international terrorism and
removing Iran from the entourage of Beijing and Moscow, on the heels of Syria,
Venezuela, and Cuba. The president also knows that this achievement, added to
his numerous other accomplishments, will establish him as one of America’s
outstanding presidents, not least because of the psychotic fervor of many of
his domestic opponents.
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