Ominously, things seem to be coming to a head concerning Iran’s nuclear program. Will it be negotiations or war? While presidents Obama and Biden would only go so far as to vaguely suggest that nothing – including possible military action – was off the table in the effort to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons aspirations, President Trump has thrown down the gauntlet to Iran in direct and no uncertain terms.
Thus, he unequivocally declared that “[Iran] can’t have a nuclear weapon” and that although he prefers a diplomatic approach to stopping Iran from getting one, he pointedly added that Iran was “going to be in great danger” if it didn’t agree to a nuclear deal. He explained that “[i]f it requires military, we’re going to have military” and for the first time specified that “Israel will be obviously be much involved in that.”
Aside from President Trump’s tone, there are several other reasons why the current Iranian situation is more fraught than ever before. For one thing, in a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Khameini, President Trump reportedly set a short, two-month time frame for negotiations to succeed.
For another, the U.S. is in the midst of a huge naval buildup in the region, including battle groups with aircraft carriers. This is the kind of firepower that is emboldening.
And of course, this is a time of particular Iranian vulnerability given the military drubbing it got from Israel last year, especially the utter wasting of its air defenses.
Moreover, the logic of definitively confronting Iran now is manifest. Iran is at the center of a multi-tentacled proxy terrorist network that continues to plague much of the world and which will inevitably become intolerable. So it is surely counter-intuitive to think about waiting until after it becomes a nuclear power before confronting the threat Iran poses.
But perhaps the most important factor of all may be Donald Trump’s personality. He has made a career of always striving to deal from positions of strength. So the last thing he would presumably want is to have to deal with a nuclear weapons-empowered Iran instead of the current defanged version.
And he surely has also demonstrated many times over that he has ice water in his veins.
So if the Mullahs fail to agree to a Trump-designed nuclear deal with real inspections and verifiability – and an accounting of what they achieved in the course of their cheating under the loopholed 2015 nuclear deal – they will do so at their great peril.
