The Situation: Bombs and Trust

I went on vacation last week. The Situation did not. It spread to Iran.

It was on the day I left for vacation, in fact, that Israel began its strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities, Iranian scientists, and missile launch capabilities. And it was on the day of my return to Washington that the U.S. joined the fight with 30,000 lbs bunker buster bombs.

I have a few thoughts about the Israeli action against Iran, and the U.S. allowing itself to get drawn into the matter.

They all involve trust.

First, I am not in principle opposed to Israeli military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program, though I have always leaned against it. I say leaned against it because if someone could persuade me that the Israelis could really pull off a devastating blow against the program that would set it back permanently or for a long time or that could induce Iranian capitulation and agreement to dismantle it, I might favor it.

That person would have to persuade me as well that the costs would likely be relatively low, both in the short term (which I suspect is true) and in the longer term (which I suspect is not true). And that person would have to persuade me further that Iran would not simply reconstitute its program on a covert basis in response and then race to the bomb.

Since laying out the classified information that might indicate such conclusions is unthinkable, the conclusions necessarily rely on trust.

And I don’t trust Bibi Netanyahu.

Second, I am not in principle opposed to American military action in support of Israeli military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program, though I have always leaned against it. I say leaned against it here because if someone could persuade me that the Israelis really had a plausible strike plan and that all it really needed was a few bunker buster strikes by the United States to succeed, I would be tempted. That person would have to persuade me, of course, that U.S. involvement was truly necessary and would likely be decisive. And that person would have to persuade me further that Iran would not have retaliatory capabilities—either in the short term or the long term—that exceed the likely value of the strike. 

Since laying out the classified information that might indicate such conclusions is similarly unthinkable, these conclusions necessarily also rely on trust.

And I don’t trust Donald Trump.

Assessing the Israeli actions and the American actions in the total absence of trust in either country’s leadership is actually hard. One could, I suppose, simply dismiss the actions, but that seems foolish. Both the American and Israeli strikes appear to have been well executed, and they appear to have hit and severely damaged important targets. While Trump is certainly getting ahead of the game when he declares that the Fordo site has been completely obliterated, a claim the Pentagon has not backed up, there is at least a serious chance that the strikes have jointly accomplished—or are in the process of accomplishing—an objective that would represent a significant strategic accomplishment. One should not let one’s distaste for Trump or Netanyahu or both blind oneself to that accomplishment.

That said, the distrust makes it profoundly difficult to accept the claims of either government that such an accomplishment is actually at hand. Trump lies about everything, often for his own self-aggrandizement. He would trumpet his use of these very large munitions even if they had done little. Netanyahu, for his part, is fighting for his political life and to rehabilitate a political legacy as a tough security guy profoundly tarnished by the Hamas attacks of October 7. Dealing with Iran has been his decades-long policy fixation. He also lies frequently.

There are other reasons for skepticism. My Brookings colleague Robert Kagan, writing in the Atlantic, cites two of particular salience. The first is that it is implausible to believe the Iranian nuclear program can be destroyed from the air alone:

Bombing alone will not achieve a verifiable and lasting end to Iran’s nuclear program. It can buy time, and Israel’s strikes have done that. American strikes could extend that period, but a determined Iranian regime will likely try again. A permanent solution would require a far more intrusive international verification regime, which in turn would require a ground presence for protection.

The second is that one simply cannot ignore the domestic side of Trump’s resort to force:

I can think of nothing more perilous to American democracy right now than going to war. Think of how Trump can use a state of war to strengthen his dictatorial control at home. Trump declared a state of national emergency in response to a nonexistent “invasion” by Venezuelan gangs. Imagine what he will do when the United States is actually at war with a real country, one that many Americans fear.

I am less alarmed than Kagan is about the capacity of the attack on the Iranian nuclear program to justify domestic repression. Yet in a zero trust environment with respect to the two governments that are carrying out these strikes, one doesn’t have to be crazy or paranoid to think about the relationship between overseas military adventures and domestic consolidation of power. Indeed, the concern is as old as the Founders’ suspicion of standing armies and it is exacerbated when countries are led by men wholly lacking in civic virtue.

Finally, we should consider at least briefly the small matter of the law, which I discussed this morning on #DogShirtTV with Marty Lederman and on Lawfare Live subsequently with Scott R. Anderson:

I find the argument for this strike’s legality in the absence of congressional authorization highly attenuated—not impossible, but implausible. As the law has no enforcement mechanism here, the point is largely an academic one. But it strikes me as a factor worthy of consideration in deciding whether one supports an action that the president could have gone to Congress for an authorization for the strikes and chose not to do so. 

Years ago, as the United States was preparing to go to war in Iraq, a man named Radek Sikorski—then a scholar at AEI—gave me a ride home from my office at the Washington Post. I asked him whether he supported the coming Iraq attack, and he responded that he supported it completely if it could be done quickly and effectively and without large-scale casualties and opposed it utterly if it couldn’t. I thought his answer glib at the time. In retrospect, it strikes me as very wise. (Sikorski is now the foreign minister of Poland.)

So I am going to adopt it here as my own answer as to whether I support the American attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities. I support them strongly if they were effective in stopping the Iranian nuclear program, if blowback and unintended consequences prove minimal, and if they don’t contribute to the erosion of American democracy. And I oppose them just as strongly if they do otherwise.

The Situation, which never takes a vacation, continues tomorrow.