When is an enemy threat imminent? Once the button has been pushed and a missile is on the way? That is obviously too late.
Does potentiality blossom into imminence when a nuclear warhead is being loaded at the launch site? Too late again. Why should a target nation wait until it’ll take luck in addition to skill and great technology to avoid mass destruction in a city of its own or of an ally?
Or, more reasonably, is a threat imminent when a declared enemy has secretly enriched 968 pounds of uranium to weapons grade 60%, for which there is no civilian use and which can have no purpose other than to arm a nuclear weapon? That is what Iran did before the latest round of hostilities, as CIA Director John Ratcliffe testified March 19 on Capitol Hill.
Surely the question, which is asked of every president every day, is affected by Iran having sworn “death to America” for 47 years and killed and maimed thousands of Americans in that time. The murderous mullahs say they will kill us if they can, and they were determinedly approaching the moment when they could.
The matter of imminence involves technical issues but is ultimately a political question. The president has a duty to answer it. He does not have the constitutional right to wage war indefinitely, but he may and perhaps must trigger military action for a limited period. President Donald Trump answered the question of imminence by giving the go-ahead for the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. He listened, as he should, to expert military advice, but generals are not, thankfully, entrusted by citizens to make the final decision.
Some politicians slough off moral and political decisions to technical experts, even irrelevant ones. Supporters of permissive abortion, green climate policies, and insane pandemic restrictions try to fence these massive issues off from responsible decision-makers by pretending they are merely about healthcare or science. But they aren’t. They are about such nontrivial matters as what it means to be human, whether to impoverish millions of people, and whether to shut down the world and its economy. The Left wants its political opponents to defer to credentialled experts because they are easier to suborn than populations of voters, and have in many categories already been suborned.
Critics of U.S.-Israeli efforts to end the Iranian threat, and perhaps to topple the Islamic Republic in the process, are like the Cheshire Cat, who told Humpty Dumpty, “When I use a word, it means just what I intend it to mean.” The word “imminent” is useful because it is vague. So Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Joe Kent, who recently resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, with many others, can say Iran’s threat was not imminent because they narrow the meaning of the word to suit their political and ideological predispositions, or just because they hate Trump and fight every word he utters, including “but” and “and.”
If something is “imminent,” it “overhangs” or “looms.” “Imminent” is almost a synonym for “threat.” Which turns an “imminent threat” into a “threatening threat,” a fuzzy tautology available for anyone to distort. But such a threat isn’t necessarily immediate.
Surely, however, it is reasonable to judge that a threat looms from a regime and cult dedicated to war with the United States and Israel, the two principal combatants. If you answer no, you aren’t really interested in America defending itself. Which is probably the main point.