The war with Iran is at the forefront of the conservative post-mortem following the Republican Party’s disastrous midterm election showing. Yet, notwithstanding debates surrounding the necessity or otherwise of the war, it is farcical for its proponents to blame the war’s negative consequences on its opponents.
The war was controversial from the day it began in February. Its supporters presented the regime-change-focused military action as the key to preventing an imminent Iranian nuclear threat to the United States. They believed in President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the regime would fall in relatively short — and U.S. painless — order.
In contrast, others warned that a regime-change-focused war would be fraught with complexity, and severely deleterious to the U.S. military’s ability to counter China’s far greater threat. It was also noted that Iran did not pose an imminent nuclear threat. For one, the regime has not mastered the critical means of putting a nuclear warhead on a viable missile, nor has it developed intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike the United States. On these points, critics of the war were correct.
Yes, Iran is the world’s preeminent state sponsor of terrorism. Yes, it has the blood of many Americans on its hands; hundreds killed, tens of thousands wounded. Yes, it has a stated ambition to wipe Israel, a close U.S. ally, off the map. Yes, former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal was weak in form and effect. Even those of us who disagreed with this war should admit there was a legitimate case to take military action. At the same time, there is no question that the war caused significant increases in inflation, particularly in terms of gas prices. These downstream economic effects hurt many American families. Vice President JD Vance is correct in identifying these costs, even as he disingenuously plays down the punishing impact of tariffs on goods prices and the economy.
All of these considerations deserve scrutiny. What deserves only disdain, however, is the notion that blame for the war’s negative consequences belongs to those who opposed the war or supported its ceasefires.
Take former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. Responding to Vance, Fleischer argues that “The problem was not the Iran War. It was the cease fire.” He adds that the “war should have been over six months ago, with the Strait of Hormuz wide open and oil flowing. The second and third tiers of Iranian leadership should have been destroyed, and we should have supported the pro-western forces who could have taken leadership. We stood on the brink of a new, more peaceful Middle East – and then we blinked. We had a chance not only to deny Iran nuclear weapons, but to get rid of the world’s biggest supporter of terrorism.… instead, you negotiated a cease fire that didn’t last, didn’t work and left us in no man’s land, with higher prices and our troops still deployed. Our troops could have been home, the Navy returned to its bases, a peaceful regime in place, new alliances forged, and gas prices below $3.00 a gallon.”
This is farcical stuff.
As was the similar contention made by Fox News host Mark Levin. Having lost his mirror, Levin spent most of Wednesday lamenting the vitriolic discourse on social media. But plainly referring to Vance, Levin added that he had “screwed up” the war and launched “propaganda ops” to blame Israel.
Levin is right that Israel does not deserve blame for Trump’s decision to launch the war, even if Trump was utterly foolish to take Netanyahu’s rose-tinted predictions seriously. Regardless, the notion that the war would have been won, gas prices stabilized, and the regime changed had the military simply kept up its operations is ridiculous.
The Trump administration pursued its ceasefires with Iran not simply on the basis of stabilizing energy supplies. It also did so on the basis that the regime was holding on resolutely even under immense pressure. And that it would not fall in the short- to medium-term. The administration thus faced a choice between attempting to cool the conflict or continuing the war for many more months with uncertain impacts. The cooling of the conflict has somewhat relieved energy prices while putting immense pressure on Iran via the imposition of a U.S. Navy blockade. That blockade has also restored pre-war flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
On the flip side, continuing the war would have required sustained action of uncertain duration, all while further depleting critical munitions (which cannot be restored to minimally acceptable levels before 2029), and further undermining the U.S. and global economies.
This bears noting in light of the most delusional element of Fleischer’s “it’s the anti-war people who deserve blame for gas prices!” claim. Namely, his assertion that “we should have supported the pro-western forces who could have taken leadership.” This, we are told a few words later, would have led to a “peaceful regime” being in place now.
I’m sorry, what?
Who are these unnamed Western forces? The Kurds?
Give me a break. A truly effective armed uprising would require more than Fleischer’s fiction of a CIA magic Santa Claus-style armament sleigh soaring over every Iranian city, offloading vast amounts of weaponry and ammunition. It would require a multi-year program to train, organize, and deploy multi-ethnic fighters, establish ground-level intelligence and command networks, and then overcome a fanatical base of millions of heavily armed regime fighters. It would require American boots on the ground to call in air strikes, sustain those strikes, and support operations. Hence why Trump has abandoned his regime change ambitions.
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As I noted in July, “as in the CIA effort to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, [a regime change effort] would involve highly uncertain outcomes.… But amid such state failure, we would see soaring rates of starvation, disease, and refugee flows among Iran’s 90 million-strong population. We would see fanatical splinter groups pursuing utterly unrestrained violence. And we would absolutely see the U.S. being forced to dedicate ever-increasing military and economic resources to mitigate these challenges and boost a (almost certainly divided) resistance. It’s understandable why Israel supports this choice of escalation against its nemesis. Israel believes a civil war would distract the regime and reduce its ability to threaten the Jewish state. It also believes that the regime would eventually fall. But Israel’s choice is an easier one because, as it well knows, the U.S. would bear the outsize burden of securing a positive outcome.”
In short, Trump tried to make the best of a bad decision. Those who argued in favor of this bad decision, and did so with glee and the claim it “had no downside,” should show a little more honesty. Iran is America’s enemy, but they offered poor analysis.