Iran

Friday

Roger Kimball

Ignore the propaganda war

Prediction: by the time you read this, the joint US-Israeli operation in Iran will be all but over. In fact, it had mostly ended by the start of April. The Kool-Aid-dispensing press has been telling us since the conflict began that Iran was winning. They wanted it so badly to be true. Being adept at magical thinking, they also believe that what they wanted to be the case would suddenly, hey presto, become the case. A cover story in the Economist declared “Advantage Iran.” “A month of bombing Iran,” that once-sober publication announced, “has achieved nothing... For now, at least, the advantage lies with the Islamic Republic.” Not to be outdone, the Financial Times weighed in with “Iran could emerge from the war stronger and more dangerous.” Right. Iran’s navy? Sunk.

propaganda war trump iran
trump
Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump is going on a firing spree

The surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump fired his attorney general Pam Bondi and appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche her temporary successor. It’s that he waited as long as he did. After exercising what is for him unusual restraint – his cabinet was in a state of perpetual upheaval during his first term as president – Trump is going on a firing spree. "He’s very angry, and he’s going to be moving people," one top administration official told Politico yesterday. Next on the chopping block could be a host of Trump loyalists – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Remer, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – whom the President has found wanting.

epic fury
Spectator Editorial

Operation Epic Fury is costing Trump his coalition

As US troops flock to danger, Donald Trump seeks ways to disentangle himself from the war on Iran. “We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” he said in a 19-minute address at the start of the month. “It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective.” What’s increasingly clear is that, despite its tactical successes, Operation Epic Fury is turning into a strategic quagmire and a political miscalculation. The President’s approval rating has sunk to -18 percent, the lowest in his second term. Among independents, Trump is on -45 percent, the worst recorded score of any second-term president. That is the perspective concerning the White House.

Thursday

Tim Shipman

How bad could the energy price crisis get in Britain?

The energy price surge caused by war in the Middle East has sent shockwaves through Westminster. It has pushed up inflation and the cost of borrowing, causing panic in the cabinet and the recognition that government intervention could be needed on a vast scale to support the cost of living. The UK Prime Minister told a private audience: "The assumption that the growth of the developed countries can proceed steadily on the basis of cheap energy has been shattered almost overnight." He further observed: "The problem is not simply one of inflation. It is the whole structure of the economy." In the Treasury there is something approaching a siege mentality. The Chancellor has "to spend [her] time firefighting.

energy crisis
iran
Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s rambling Iran address was full of wishful thinking

In his nationwide address on Wednesday, Donald Trump could not have been clearer about the course of the Iran war. It’s not ending any time soon and there will be no deescalation of military force. Instead, channeling his inner General Curtis LeMay, Trump announced, “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.”  No, they don’t. It was a jarring reference to an ancient and proud Persian civilization that has been commandeered by a gang of thugs.

war
Roger Kimball

Trump touts the successes of his war for peace

“Ceasefire!” Some people worried that President Trump was taking to the air waves tonight in order to declare a ceasefire with Iran. That, clearly, was what Masoud Pezeshkian, the President of Iran hoped for in his careful, lengthy and mendacious “Letter to the American People” today. Pezeshkian said that “portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts.” Tell that to the hundreds of American victims of Iranian aggression. Tell it to the thousands of victims of Iran’s proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas.  President Trump was having none of it.

Monday

Marcus Solarz Hendriks

The three options facing Trump in Iran

As Trump contemplates a ground operation in Iran, he will be reckoning with the ghosts of previous western "excursions" in the region, as he recently labeled this war. History suggests three endgames for his intervention in Iran are plausible. First, a hasty deal on terms that aggrandize and empower Iran, creating an American equivalent to Britain’s Suez Crisis. Second, a protracted struggle which becomes structurally reminiscent of the Iraq War. Third, a dramatic escalation which achieves Iranian surrender quickly and cleanly. The bad news for Trump is that the outcome he seeks, number three, is the one without real precedent. In the first scenario, Trump makes a deal on terms that flatter Iran.

Sunday

Ed Husain

In defense of Dubai

As the Islamist regime in Iran attacks Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bahrain and Kuwait with drones and missiles, some in the west are quietly happy to see the Gulf’s skyscrapers lose their shine. "Dubai has no culture or history," say the armchair critics. When it comes to measures of wealth preservation, attracting millionaires, rule of law, social safety, artificial intelligence adaptation and combating Islamist radicalism, the UAE comes out far ahead of many western countries. But we can’t acknowledge this, so we insinuate our snootiness is about culture, history, risks and future stability. The snobs are wrong.  We insinuate our snootiness towards Dubai is about culture, history, risks and future stability.

Friday

Freddy Gray

Will Trump strike a ‘final blow’ on Iran?

Will America’s ground invasion of Iran begin in the early hours of tomorrow? Everybody knows, by now, that Trump likes to initiate action late on Fridays, after the markets close. And late last night, the so-called Pentagon Pizza Watch channel – which monitors late-night food orders from the Pentagon for evidence that something big is afoot – reported a surge of activity, leading to all sorts of prediction-market bets that a new military operation would start this weekend. Of course, with so much money to be made on war gambling – there’s now a Polymarket "situation room" bar in Washington, DC – the odds of someone trying to dupe the markets are short.

Wednesday

Chris Mondics

Why every president ignores Congress on war

Is there a plausible legal basis for going to war with Iran? Senate Democrats say no, and late yesterday forced a vote on a war powers resolution to bring the hostilities to a halt. It failed along largely partisan lines, 53-47, but Democrats say they intend to bring it up again, citing widening public disapproval of the war. “We have created a catastrophe in the Middle East,” said Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, who sponsored the resolution. “This is what you get when you put talk show hosts and real estate developers in charge of national security.” The Trump administration has made it plain that providing a legal justification for the war isn’t terribly high on its list of concerns.

War Powers

Sunday

Kabir Singh Bawa

Iran’s strike exposes the danger of the Chagos handover

In a sharp escalation, Iran attempted to strike the joint UK-US base Diego Garcia with two intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Both failed: one broke apart in flight and the other was targeted by an SM-3 interceptor from an American warship. The base was left untouched. The significance, however, lies less in the failure than in the fact that the attempt was made at all, which has expanded the scope of the existing conflict zone beyond all expectations. Diego Garcia forms part of the Chagos Archipelago – sovereign British territory – and is one of the most critical platforms for American power projection anywhere on earth.

Saturday

Nicholas Farrell

Has Giorgia Meloni really turned against Donald Trump?

I often think that the dissemination of news is like a game of Chinese Whispers. Giorgia Meloni, for instance, has not condemned the US-Israeli war on Iran. Yet such esteemed exponents of the noble craft of reportage as the Times of London and the Daily Beast are adamant that she has. Even Meloni – President Donald Trump’s favorite EU leader and closest European ally – has turned against the President, or so they are saying. Proclaimed the Times: "Giorgia Meloni comes out against Trump’s ‘illegal’ war on Iran." Crowed the Daily Beast: "Trump humiliated as key right-wing ally slams his deadly war." There was only one aspect of the war that Meloni condemned in her speech: the killing of civilians No, as a matter of fact, no she has not.

Friday

Freddy Gray

Iran and America’s new protection racket

"Whoever rules the waves rules the world" – Alfred Thayer Mahan. Would Donald Trump have attacked Iran on February 28 if the Supreme Court had not ruled against his tariffs on February 20? The two issues may seem unrelated. Yet, as a fascinating piece by Captain John Konrad has pointed out, a closer inspection of Trump’s international agenda reveals his administration’s intense focus on trade, energy and maritime control – and that might help explain the otherwise inexplicable folly of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz.  Trump is determined to bring about an American Golden Age. That involves controlling gas and oil, aggressively reducing China’s expanding control of shipping lanes, and establishing US dominance over key maritime chokepoints.

Strait of Hormuz
Jonathan Spyer

Israel can’t assassinate its way to victory over Iran

The killing of the Iranian senior security official Ali Larijani this week is the most significant "targeted assassination" undertaken since Israel’s killing (in cooperation with the US) of supreme leader Ali Khamenei on the opening day of the war. These two very high-level hits have been accompanied by a long list of killings of less well-known senior Iranian officials. These have included Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commander Mohammad Pakpour, intelligence minister Esmail Khatib, armed forces chief of staff Abdolrahim Mousavi, defense minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, military intelligence chief Saleh Asadi and many others. Around 30 officials in all have met their deaths at the hands of this campaign.

war powers
John R. MacArthur

The outrageous cynicism of the Democrats on Iran

Given my longstanding disgust with America’s lawlessly interventionist and self-destructive foreign policy, I should be outraged by Donald Trump’s cavalier remarks justifying – and weirdly minimizing – his surprise attack against Iran in collaboration with Israel. After all, a president stupid enough to mock the new Supreme Leader as “damaged” and only “alive in some form” – while simultaneously urging sitting-duck oil tanker captains to “show some guts” by running the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz – is someone who logically should be rebuked in the firmest possible terms. But this wildly unstable solipsist is very different from other politicians.

Thursday

Lynne O’Donnell

Why the Afghanistan-Pakistan war matters

More than a decade ago, during a tense visit to Islamabad as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton gave Pakistan’s leaders a warning: "You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors." She was referring to the Taliban and other militant groups that Islamabad had long tolerated as part of its "strategic depth" policy aimed at countering India’s regional dominance. Now, as Pakistan’s jets strike targets inside Afghanistan and the Taliban mobilize forces along the border, that warning seems like a prophecy.

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

Is ‘international law’ practical?

The acceleration of history and the increasingly rapid advancement of the postmodern project, aimed at the transcendence of humanity by itself, makes consideration of the fundamentals of the progressive project necessary, but also inevitable. Among them is its dedication to the hectic search for hitherto unsuspected “human rights” and their instant realization in the name of “natural law,” a subject the French historian and political philosopher Pierre Manent has studied in depth and brilliantly illuminated in a number of works, most recently Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Iran isn’t Trump’s only ‘imminent threat’

President Trump thought it would be a cakewalk. Far from capitulating, his nemesis seems to be on the comeback trail. Gabbard acknowledged that there was no compelling evidence that Iran was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear program Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell thus announced on Wednesday that unless a successor is confirmed by the Senate, he has “no intention of leaving.” The bad news keeps mounting for Trump. Inflation is ticking up, King Charles’ upcoming visit is starting to look rather iffy, the President's gilded ballroom project looks as though it will be smacked down by a federal judge, and energy prices are rising precipitously.

Reid Tillman Smith

Joe Kent’s resignation was an act of political positioning

Reflecting on the resignation of Cyrus Vance, James Thomson, the American historian and journalist, wrote in the Washington Post that the former secretary of state “has done us all a great public service.” In doing so, Thomson argued, Vance gave “new life and spine to a somewhat rare and weak convention in our nation: resignation in protest of an issue of principle.” The year was 1980. Vance had resigned in protest over the Carter administration’s decision to authorize Operation Eagle Claw, the ill-fated mission to rescue American hostages held in Iran after the Islamic revolution. The mission ended ignominiously. President Carter pulled the plug after equipment failures and a deadly helicopter collision killed eight service members. Vance was vindicated.

Joe Kent

Wednesday

Spectator Editorial

Why Iran will hasten MAGA’s demise

Readers may disagree with the cover line of this issue. Pronouncing “the end of Trumpism” feels somewhat similar to declaring “the end of history” – a provocative, albeit less grandiose, statement that risks being mocked in the near future. We should start by saying we hope that we are wrong. Trumpism, as this magazine understands it, has been a boon to America. As Christopher Caldwell argues, the rise of Donald Trump was a healthy democratic response to a fetid political system. On many fronts, the Trump administration, now in its second and more dynamic term, has made great progress. It has fought illegal immigration with vigor.