George Rebane

Starting with the bottom line, I am very disappointed in the lack of progress, nay, backsliding in how the administration’s apparent policy and visible actions toward Iran are being implemented.  A week or so ago President Trump promised that holy hell would rain down on Iran if the ragheads started firing on our warships.  Well, they’ve done it on two separate occasions now, and all we have done is return “appropriate defensive” fires against their nearby launch points and related command facilities.  And to date no additional strikes against Kargh Island or other strategic targets have been launched.  So, no hell, holy or otherwise, has rained down on them.  The president himself admitted that our response to their attacks was just a “love tap”.  But if they did it again or failed to negotiate, then this time we would really really get mad – yeah!

The administration keeps forgetting that we are dealing with zealous thugs and murderers who have prevaricated and lied about EVERYTHING for almost a half century.  Their tactic over these decades remains unchanged – keep working hard to develop a nuclear weapon while engaging the west (i.e. US and Israel) in negotiations whose only purpose is to delay any meaningful response to their military development and terror support activities in the region.  President Trump with Prime Minister Netanyahu finally broke this ropa-dope last summer with the massive strike against their nuclear development facilities.

But this year’s follow-on campaign to destroy Iran’s military and destabilize its murderous regime has had limited success, no matter how much it is celebrated by the White House and Fox News.  Our own intelligence apparatus has stated that Iran retains most of its missile inventory and launch capabilities, and that the president’s blockade of Iranian ports will not cause significant economic damage for another two to three months.  In the meantime the president and Republicans are volubly taking it in the shorts from Democrats, the lamestream media, and, of course, America’s main street voters.  Iran is betting that Trump will cave under that political pressure before any serious hurt falls on the regime (the Iranian public be damned).

And so far that tactic is working in spades.  We hear daily of ‘negotiating points’ being exchanged and ‘studied’ with no visible progress toward any resolution.  The only things happening is that we’re turning around all maritime traffic that involves Iranian ports, and Iran continues to keep Hormuz bottled up with its own ‘love taps’ against anyone in the strait that they don’t like.  The trickle of commercial traffic through the strait, after all the braggadocio from the White House, is just plain embarrassing.

Elsewhere in these pages I have gone into detail as to what we should be doing militarily while waiting for the ragheads to unconditionally surrender.  The fact that we are trading negotiating points with them is an admission that we are on the road to an effective capitulation which leaves the regime in control and able to pursue their goals unchanged.  There should only be one negotiating point – one of two boxes they get to check – the regime is allowed to go into exile with their families, or we kill them.  Full stop.

So where are we now?  My assessment is that we are at a draw militarily, since they still control Hormuz with ample weaponry (which is the best they could ever hope for), and we are losing politically – losing badly with little promise of getting a better result while continuing to do the same thing (i.e. insane participation in delaying negotiations).

[9may26 update] Much of the world is counseling President Trump to hold off attacking Iran’s strategic targets such as transportation arteries, oil pipelines, storage facilities, refineries, and power generation and distribution centers.  Their advice is to yet again give diplomacy a chance to resolve the ongoing conflict.  They recommend that we respond with ‘patience’.

Not all of these advisors have the best interest of the US, Israel, or the west in mind.  Most would like to see authoritarian states, including all of Islam, prevail in the world order.  Nevertheless, there also exists a cohort of good-hearted naifs, in addition to the cynical and the less well-read, who counsel patience in dealing with Iran.

However, even a cursory examination of what patience entails clearly indicates that it is inimical to western interests, especially as it concerns the political fortunes of the Trump administration and the Republicans.  The US and Israel have practiced patience with Iran’s murderous regime for almost fifty years.  Over the decades this has cost hundreds of thousands of lives at the hand of Iran’s mullahs and their international terrorist proxies.  The oft-neglected ground truth in all these sentiments is Iran’s unwavering goal to become the regional hegemon in the Mideast, which requires it to gain deliverable nuclear weapons, destroy Israel, and weaken the west in resisting the global spread and dominance of Islam.

The ONLY final solution with Iran is the prompt removal of its theocratic regime with its hegemonic goals, and replacing it with a democratically elected government that eschews nuclear ambitions and is willing to allow snap inspections to demonstrate its compliance as a new member in the community of peaceful and productive nations.  Any negotiations that seek an agreement deviating from this final solution is an existential loss for the west and world peace.  And every additional day of delay to achieve such an end result makes it less likely that such a final solution will be feasible.

In the US this is doubly true during an election year in which the anti-American Democrats have an excellent chance of neutralizing the Republicans’ advantage in Congress.  And Iran knows that the longer it can delay and retain the status quo in the gulf, the more politically difficult it will be for Trump to resume an effective military campaign to achieve the final solution.  Our continuing to practice patience for an eventually negotiated deal that leaves this murderous criminal regime in power will achieve all these goals.