Drumpf To Attack Iran - The Disastrous Idea That Won't Go Away

Trump might be tempted to order a military attack on Iran, because his “maximum pressure” campaign failed to thwart that country’s nuclear program.

When President Donald Trump convened his national-security team last week to discuss whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, his top advisers dissuaded him from launching missile strikes, The New York Times reported. This comes as a relief, but that such a move was even under consideration is cause for alarm.

The scorn now being heaped upon the president’s Iran policy—which has manifestly failed to stop that country’s nuclear-weapons program—may animate the president’s interest in taking dramatic action before his term expires. Trump’s critics have even speculated that when the president recently bounced his top Pentagon officials, it was out of a desire to attack Iran. I still doubt the connection, but, regardless, this commander in chief has the authority to do a lot of damage in his remaining days in office—no matter who else is in the room with him. And attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities would be disastrous.

Given its fixation on Iran, the Trump administration might seek to use as pretext for a military attack on Iran the International Atomic Energy Agency’s recent announcement that the country has now succeeded in reprocessing 12 times the amount of low-enriched uranium that would have been permitted under the JCPOA. When nuclear material turned up at a location that Iranian officials had not declared to be a nuclear site, the IAEA described their explanation of it as “not technically credible.”

Having failed in four years to craft a successful strategy for constraining Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, the Trump administration can only make things worse by conducting a military attack on the country in the waning days of this president’s tenure. Trump and the advocates of maximum pressure have learned the hard way that their theory of success was mistaken. They’ve managed to isolate the U.S., not Iran. Diplomacy is more than making demands and administering punishment; it also requires winning support from those countries essential to your policy’s success.