OPINION:
The Trump administration has given a lot of scattershot and ad hoc reasons for attacking Iran.
Iran has ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States. It was going to launch first. The Israelis were going to launch first. We want the Iranian people to rise; we are not seeking regime change. My personal favorite: They were within a week of having weapons-grade uranium.
We heard that same story 20 years ago and as recently as eight months ago, when we were told by the president: “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
We have been offered all the reasons available except for the real one, which is that Iran is a neighborhood bully that has been asking for a beating for almost 50 years, and it finally ran across an American president willing to give it one.
The reality is that President Trump’s second term is becoming characterized as the moment to knock out the punch list of issues and nations that other presidents have either made worse or pretended didn’t exist. Illegal immigration. Drug trafficking. The creeping craziness of the cultural left. The default anti-Americanism of international organizations. Venezuela. Cuba. Now Iran.
If you’re Mexico, now is a good time to get worried.
It’s also a good time to get worried if you’re part of Beijing’s genocide and slavery team. Twice in the past eight months, China’s air defense systems have turned out to be lemons that fail in actual combat (at least against Americans). “Fail” is probably too generous; the systems didn’t really fail so much as they didn’t exist.
The last group of people that might want to consider fretting are the professional fretters in the Democratic Party. Is this attack on Iran an unalloyed good idea? Probably not. It seems likely we’re going to run into some bumps down the road, but we won’t really know for a while.
Was this attack or something like it avoidable? No, not indefinitely. The Iranians have been provocateurs all over the Middle East for 50 years; it was inevitable that the U.S. would eventually run out of patience and do something like this.
That’s partly why American voters are giving Mr. Trump relatively wide leeway in this instance. Few Americans (especially those of a certain age) have not wanted to punch Iran in the nose. It’s tough to be opposed to knocking down the bully a peg or two.
It doesn’t help the Democrats that their past two presidents have either outright sent the protection racket that is the Iranian government cash (thank you, Ben Rhodes and company) or slept their way through their terms in office.
One of the downsides of ignoring problems is that the guy who ultimately does something about them might not impose the solution you would prefer. If the Democrats who are barking now had a better plan, then maybe they should have implemented it when they could have.
Finally, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who served in Mr. Trump’s first term, has been persistent in keeping the focus on the misdeeds of the Iranian regime. To the extent that credit is going around, he deserves some of it.
Of course, most of the credit (or blame, depending) will be Mr. Trump’s as he works through his punch list of things and places that need to be either fixed or broken.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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