If you didn’t pay as much attention to the reasons to not have another Middle East war, you should probably read this Peter Beinart article. It ‘s now even more important as the WH tries to apply similar incentives to denuclearize North Korea as the so-called Iran Deal Trump has violated.
Fast forward 11 years. Bolton is back in government as Donald Trump’s national-security adviser. Netanyahu is again Israel’s prime minister. And they are making the same arguments about the futility of the international inspections regime in Iran that they once made about the futility of the international inspections regime in Iraq.
Obviously, there are differences between then and now. In 2003, the United States government wanted war. Today, it wants to undo a diplomatic agreement. In 2003, the Israeli government (as opposed to Netanyahu, who was then a private citizen) was wary of America’s confrontational policy. Today, the Israeli government is aggressively lobbying for it. But while history is not repeating itself, it is rhyming in remarkable ways. Which raises a disturbing question: How is it possible—15 years after the launch of one the greatest catastrophes in American history—that so many of the assumptions that guided America’s march to war in Iraq still dominate American foreign policy today?
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Television interview shows also focus obsessively on the news of the moment. When Bolton or Netanyahu go on a Sunday show to peddle their current views on Iran, they can be confident they won’t be questioned much about their past views on Iraq. Thus, viewers hear arguments that sound reasonable in isolation without realizing that they’ve already proved disastrous in practice.
I’m not suggesting that political talk shows only book politicians and pundits who’s past predictions have been proven right. (Since I myself supported the Iraq War, I’d fail that test myself.) I’m suggesting that they ask politicians and pundits to reflect on what they’ve learned. If they merely did that, Bolton and Netanyahu’s current arguments about Iran would sound very different than they do now.
The decertification of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) by Trump is most unfortunate. It will force Iran to choose one of two options.
The first is to exploit the division between the United States and the other signatories. In this case, Tehran could continue to adhere to the provisions of the deal, even though Iran will still suffer from unilateral (but not as severe) American sanctions.
Under U.S. law, Trump must wait at least 180 days before imposing their most severe consequences, which includes targeting banks of countries that fail to appreciably cut their oil purchases from Iran.
The second option for Iran is to withdraw from the deal altogether, restart its nuclear weapons program and potentially even withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to prevent the monitoring of its nuclear program by the IAEA, which is the worst thing for Israel and other American allies in the region.
The Forever War is not just in the Middle East. It is in Korea, where US troops still stand to post along the DMZ. It is in Vietnam, where hundreds of thousands of children have been born with spina bifida, neural tube problems, missing limbs, missing vertebrae, autoimmune disorders and more, four decades after the US finished hosing that nation down with Agent Orange. And yes, the Forever War is also in Iraq, which practically glows at night from all the depleted uranium the US has detonated there since 1991.