Trump Has No Good Options On Iran |
The White House has let it be known that President Donald Trump has been briefed on options for military strikes in Iran. This is a message, not only to the theocrats in Tehran but to the rest of us. He wants us to believe he’s about to rescue Iran’s protesters.
For days, the president has issued increasingly bellicose warnings toward Tehran as protests have convulsed the Islamic Republic. "Locked and loaded,” he has warned. America will “come to their rescue” if the regime keeps killing demonstrators. Iran is “in big trouble.” We will be “hitting them very very hard where it hurts.”
Strong words. The kind that play well on cable news and social media. Part of this is Trump being Trump—bluster as policy. But part of it is a president determined to be different from his predecessors. Obama engaged and retreated. Biden dithered.
Trump wants to be the one who acted. His tough rhetoric raises expectations among Iranians risking their lives, among Gulf allies watching nervously, among those in Trump’s circle who are urging him to action. The problem? Trump doesn’t have good options. He doesn’t even have mediocre ones. What he has are three paths forward, each worse than the last.
Hit some barracks of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Destroy a naval facility in the Gulf. Take out a command center. Enough to say we did something. Not enough to start a war. I have covered enough of these “messaging strikes” to know the script. They satisfy the political imperative to act. They give the president his talking points. They let everyone move on. They also accomplish nothing.
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A few destroyed buildings won’t stop the Basij—a militia that works with Iran’s security forces—from dragging young women into vans. They won’t halt