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OPINION:
Imagine for a moment that you are in the room with Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s maniacal dictator, as he watches the coverage of Israel’s assault on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Like North Korea, Iran is a pariah state led by zealous tyrants. However, the terrorist mullahs in Tehran are now quaking in their galeshi, wondering how long they have until they are dispatched to their everlasting fate. They are, no doubt, casting a worried eye across the horizon for Israeli drones or missiles inscribed with their names.
Israel is accomplishing what should have occurred years ago, when the Iranians embarked on a missile and nuclear program. Iran’s leaders did not do so for peaceful purposes. A country sitting atop huge oil reserves has no plausible need for nuclear power. Clearly, Iran’s nuclear program is focused on weapons-grade uranium enrichment. That process is designed for only one purpose: nuclear war, specifically to threaten Israel and others in the region. Period.
The mullahs despise Israel and America. For more than four decades, these malicious rulers have led their people with the taunt “Marg bar Amrika,” or “Death to America.” This was often chanted together with “Marg bar Esra’il,” or “Death to Israel.” Frequently, the mullahs refer to the U.S. as the “Great Satan” and Israel as the “Little Satan.” These diabolical references have persisted ever since Iran overthrew their shah, an American ally, in 1979. Iran’s leaders also possess a seething enmity for Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East. It does not take much imagination for Israel’s leaders to understand that Iran represents an existential threat to the Jewish homeland.
The strikes against Iranian missile and nuclear capabilities that commenced early Friday mark the beginning of the end of a nuclear threat hanging over the Middle East and the world. As President Trump has emphatically declared, Iran will not be permitted to possess a nuclear weapon. Nevertheless, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that the U.S. did not participate in Israel’s preemptive strike on Iran. One can permit Mr. Rubio some leeway in this pronouncement because, in truth, the U.S. and Israel routinely share military intelligence and operational information. Moreover, U.S. missile defense assets are defending Israel from Iran’s attacks.
Yet, given Mr. Trump’s desire to balance Israeli security with improved relations with Arab powers, he has preferred to project the image of a peacemaker. Mr. Trump sincerely wants to secure peace in the Middle East, hoping the astounding Abraham Accords achievement of his first term will be extended and expanded in his final term.
That’s why he has pursued negotiations with Iran to end its nuclear program without resorting to military action by either Israel or the U.S. Negotiations are much preferred by influential Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, but the Iranians have not been willing to negotiate in good faith. They have used the deliberations to delay until Mr. Trump is out of office and possibly followed by a Democrat who will resume the naive appeasement approach of the Obama-Biden years.
Most recently, the president has grown tired of Iran’s dissembling and delaying tactics. Negotiations in neighboring Oman have not produced a solution, nor will they resume now that Israel has delivered debilitating strikes on Iran’s nuclear, missile and related targets. Iran is denuded of air defenses, and its airspace is wide open to attacks. It has been militarily disabled and embarrassed by Israel. Given the close U.S. alliance with Israel, a resumption of negotiations with the U.S. would appear to be a capitulation to Israel’s strength, thereby further undermining the credibility of Iran’s shaky theocratic leadership.
The way forward with Iran has changed dramatically since Israeli aircraft and drones swarmed over the Persian Gulf. Iran has few chips to play other than retaliatory terrorist strikes against Israeli and U.S. interests around the world. Still, that response would invite certain military strikes against the Iranian regime, which was teetering before Israel’s dramatic action.
We are at a point where the most effective response is to make clear to Iran and the world that until the Iranian people, not the U.S. or others, replace their government with one willing to live at peace in its neighborhood, their lot in life will not improve. Therefore, the U.S. should declare its support for Iran’s resistance movement and actively seek international advocacy for it. Indeed, Israel’s decisive action has set the conditions for the eventual overthrow of Iran’s repressive regime. It’s time to advance that outcome.
That may be exactly what the plump Hermit Kingdom’s Kim Jong-un needs to contemplate as he channel surfs between world news broadcasts and the Food Network. Strikes like those rendered by Israel could result in nights that are sleepless in Pyongyang.
• L. Scott Lingamfelter was a U.S. Army colonel and combat veteran from 1973 to 2001 and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 2002 to 2018. He is the author of “Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War” (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) and “Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East” (UPK, 2023).
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