WHY DOESN’T TRUMP JUST FINISH THE JOB IN IRAN? It’s a question heard everywhere from casual cookouts to the halls of Congress: Why doesn’t President Donald Trump just finish the job in Iran? Bomb the hell out of it, send in the troops, double down, and get it over with?
It’s a question that came up in a recent press briefing on negotiations to end the war, held on Sunday by a senior administration official. When members of Congress — a reporter mentioned Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as one example — urge the president to escalate, what is the administration’s reaction?
The first thing the official did was to recognize the legitimacy of the debate and specifically not question the motives of the critics on the hawkish side, even if he disagreed with them. “It’s always tough to get into motivations because I think people are complicated,” he said. “I think some of it’s probably political, some of it’s strategic, some of it’s that they have a deeply-held belief that this is what’s in the best interest of the country.”
But what to do? “We have to ask ourselves at any time we take an action, what does it accomplish for the American people?” the official answered. “And I think where the president’s view is right now is that you would need a substantial escalation in order to meaningfully change things that are on the ground.”
That appeared to be a frank assessment — the official emphasized the word “substantial” — of the amount of U.S. force that would be needed to “finish the job,” as some of the president’s critics define it. Which leads to the question: Would that be worth it?
“You could, of course, exert more pain, which is more pressure, which means more leverage,” the official said. “Maybe that allows you to have a better deal. But I hear some people saying we need to do this, or you can’t stop until the regime tips over. And my question on that is, well, what do you actually mean by that? Because the president of the United States has taken a lot of action.”
Indeed, the official continued, the president’s actions in Iran have already had a significant effect. “The players in the regime are radically different today than they were two months ago,” the official said. “You still have some hardliners, but you have a lot of pragmatists who have been elevated in their system, who have more influence than they did before this conflict started. And so you could always get more through military conduct, the question is whether you could get something that is worth the cost.”
The cost question — Is it worth it? — is what the president always has to ask, the official said. “Now, of course, he hasn’t taken additional military action off the table. But I think that what he said is we’re only going to do something on the military side if I think that it’s going to further our objectives. And so that’s obviously a dynamic decision-making process.”
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And finally, to Graham. The senator’s instinct “is always that the cost is worth the benefit,” the official said. “And that’s just not how the president sees these things. Obviously, he’s willing to use military force when he feels that he needs to. But he is also willing to not use it if he thinks the cost does not justify it. So it’s just a fundamentally different way of thinking about things, a fundamentally different bias, and I think that’s what’s going on.”
So why doesn’t Trump just finish the job in Iran? The short version of this conversation was that it would take a substantial escalation of military force to change the current situation, and the president does not think it is worth it. The official did not detail just what a “substantial escalation” would involve, but the U.S. has already applied a lot of military force in Iran, so it would be a lot of force on top of force. It’s no surprise the president is reluctant to do it if there are other options available.