To say I am angry would be to put it mildly. The president has attacked an uncooperative power that hides its intentions behind a cloud of secrecy and perhaps lies about having nuclear weapons (Iran) on behalf of another uncooperative power that hides its intentions behind a cloud of secrecy and definitely lies about having nuclear weapons (Israel). Both of these countries spy on the United States, both of these countries kill American citizens, and both of these countries drag America into conflict after conflict in a region of the world where our national interests range from mundane to nonexistent.
We don’t need Arab oil anymore, after all. Both of these countries have elements of religious theocratic governance (marriages in Israel are regulated by religious authorities, for example) and both of these countries interfere deeply in the internal affairs of their neighbors up to and including outright invasions in the hopes of winning territory and resources. The only significant difference is that Israel has a massive lobby in the United States that is deeply interwoven with our government at every level. You don’t have to take my word for it either, read The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago if you want a more respectable academic background on the topic.
It is not only the pro-Israel lobby at work here. The liberal hegemony crowd, a.k.a the people who think we can spread liberal democracy to every corner of the world using force, are extremely excited about the potential of regime change in Iran. In fact John Bolton, Ted Cruz, and numerous other high profile liberal hegemony supporters have already bluntly stated they are looking forward to regime change in Iran. This is the same John Bolton who thinks it would be a great idea to resettle Palestinian refugees—people who hate us just as much as he proclaims the Iranians do—in the United States to be our new neighbors. For that reason alone American nationalists should take any utterance of Mr. Bolton with a grain of salt.
Members of the Trump administration are just as bad, though. Vice President JD Vance, whom I respect immensely and consider a great future presidential candidate, said in an interview just last night:
“We did not attack the nation of Iran. We did not attack any civilian targets. We didn’t even attack military targets outside of the three nuclear weapons facilities.”
To that I say “I did not attack that man officer. Outside of punching him in the face!”.
Vance then went on to say that “the United States is not at war with Iran, we’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program”
To which I reply “My first is not a fight with that man. It is in a fight with his face!”
The administration is cannibalizing itself over this issue. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has reiterated several times that none of the US’ 17 intelligence agencies believe Iran is currently engaged in building a nuclear weapon. To quote DNI Gabbard: “[T]he IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
The President’s response to that was to claim that he “doesn’t care” what his DNI has to say on the topic and that he “believes” Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon. I believe I am close to winning the Megamillions jackpot, for all the practical good it does me.
Because of all of this Tulsi is now saying that the media is taking her statement “out of context” and is now stating that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon “within weeks to months”. This may be theoretically correct, but it is not the stated reason for attacking Iran. We were told they were essentially moments away from having the capability to flatten Tel Aviv with a nuclear warhead and we are now being told that we need to affect regime change in Iran. The media and governing classes cannot even keep their story straight and it is beginning to feel like they will do anything to lie their way into justifying another forever war in the Middle East.
America has not succeeded in a single attempt to use regime change to establish a liberal democracy in the world. We failed in Vietnam which to this day remains an authoritarian communist regime. We failed in Iraq, which today is a radical Islamic republic with immense amounts of sectarian and ethnic violence. We failed in Syria which is now run by a radical Islamist regime. Our “just bombs“ intervention in Libya has left the country a wasteland and major migrant route into Europe. The Afghanistan conflict against the Taliban ended with the Taliban returning to power with the mass backing of the Afghani people. We failed to defeat the Houthis.
Opening up China to the world economy did not turn that country into a liberal democracy like we were promised. Post Soviet Russia, which we interfered with heavily in the 1990s, is anything but a liberal democracy. And lets not forget that the current Iranian regime was created as a result of a massive popular revolution against a Western backed monarchy.
This will not be a conflict where we simply throw some ordinance at Iran and the people rise up and topple the regime. Anyone talking about regime change is talking about American boots on the ground marching on Tehran to overthrow the Iranian government. The American people do not want this. A June 13-16thth poll showed 60% of Americans want to stay out of any Israeli-Iranian conflict and only 16% of Americans expressly support such action. 65% of Democrats, 61% of Independents, and 53% of Republicans oppose military involvement against Iran while 58% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans prefer to see the United States continue to negotiate with Iran. The President knows this as well. Axios is reporting that Trump’s intention to take “two weeks to decide” on whether or not to attack Iran was actually a head-fake to appease his MAGA base and supporters that were urging restraint.
Despite his promises to revive American democracy in part through ending the forever wars Trump appears as dedicated as any other neoliberal, neoconservative, and interventionist president before him to continue ignoring the democratic will of the American people by sending our sons off to die in far away lands on behalf of political interests that don’t represent the American nation.