OPINION:
On the illiberal left and the defeatist right, America’s military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran is being condemned as “a war of choice, not a war of necessity.”
I’m here to make the case for wars of choice.
My argument is simple: Delaying wars does not ensure lasting peace. On the contrary, delaying wars has often led to wars more costly in blood and treasure. World War II is the most obvious example.
A war of choice is a conflict we decide to wage to achieve vital goals before our enemies push our backs up against the wall.
American troops should never be in a fair fight. If our enemies see that we have the means and the will to defeat them, then that may deter them. Nothing else will — certainly not endless negotiations and attempts to appease them.
What about the related argument that Iran’s rulers did not pose an “imminent threat”? It’s irrelevant. First, because even under the most creative interpretations of international law and just-war theory, there is no prohibition against addressing threats that are not “imminent.”
Second, because there is no agreed-upon definition of imminence. If your enemy picks up a pistol, does that constitute an imminent threat? Or must you wait until you see his finger on the trigger, by which time it may be too late for you to defend yourself?
The 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy — the NSS that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — explicitly endorsed preemptive action against gathering threats.
In line with those criteria, CIA Director John Ratcliffe last week told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Iran posed a “constant threat to the United States … and posed an immediate threat” before the war began.
For decades, we have allowed the threat from the self-proclaimed jihadis in Tehran to metastasize. They have been building nuclear weapons facilities under mountains. They have been funding, arming and instructing terrorist militias beyond their borders.
They have plotted assassinations and kidnappings in America and Europe. They have been amassing thousands of drones and missiles.
The regime’s allies in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang have been assisting them militarily, economically and diplomatically — not because they embrace Khomeinist theology but because they want the republic to become a more powerful member of their anti-American axis.
Ali Khamenei, Iran’s “supreme leader” from 1989 until his timely death on Feb. 28, was a man with a plan, but that plan required patience. On Oct. 7, 2023, Yahya Sinwar, the commander of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, jumped the gun and invaded Israel, carrying out mass murders, mass rapes and hostage-taking.
On Oct. 8, 2023, Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel from the north. The Jewish state found itself fighting a multifront war of necessity. It was not a given that, over the months that followed, Israel would manage to cripple both Hamas and Hezbollah.
Strikes against Israel directly from Iranian territory began in April 2024. That phase of the conflict culminated with the 12-day war in June, a joint Israel-U.S. operation that halted after President Trump sent B-2 bombers to strike some of Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities.
After that, Mr. Trump probably figured Iran’s rulers had learned a lesson and would soon look for a deal. Instead, Iran immediately went to work on Pickaxe Mountain, a nuclear facility that was to be buried so deep that even Massive Ordnance Penetrators couldn’t destroy it.
In addition, from the June 24 ceasefire to the start of the current campaign on Feb. 28, Iran’s rulers not only replaced all the missiles and drones lost in the 12-day war, but they also added thousands more.
Neither the U.S. nor Israel is producing interceptors at anything like that rate.
On Friday, the regime fired two ballistic missiles at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,300 miles from Iran. That demonstrated that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was lying when he said the regime wasn’t building missiles that could strike as far as Europe.
One of two Iranian missiles targeting the joint U.S.-British military base failed in flight; the other was intercepted by an SM-3. The U.S. can produce only about 70 of these per year, at a cost of more than $20 million each.
I’m now going to make an odd assertion: We’ve been lucky. Imagine if Sinwar, killed by Israeli forces in October 2024, had not been a genocidaire in a hurry. Imagine if Tehran’s nuclear program had continued to develop while its arsenal of missiles and drones continued to expand without interruption over the past two years.
Eventually, we would have reached a point where a war of choice would no longer have been an option. Instead, we would have had to contemplate a war of necessity whose outcome would be, at best, uncertain.
Tehran, in concert with its nuclear-armed allies in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang, might have offered America this deal: no war in return for concessions that would lead to a new world order, what Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping has called “a common destiny for mankind” with Beijing making and enforcing the rules.
We might then have deceived ourselves that “bad agreements are better than no agreements,” that it is only prudent to “avoid escalation,” and besides, “there’s no military solution.”
Great nations can decline into impotence with astonishing rapidity. You have seen that happen to some of our old friends in Europe.
President Kennedy was a Cold War liberal who today would not fit in either on the illiberal left or the defeatist right. “There are risks and costs to action,” he observed. “But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.”
• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.