Bluff? Bluster? Bombs away? Donald Trump, who has managed to wreck the 2015 nuclear curtailment accord with Iran and put the two nations on a possible path to war despite saying he doesn’t want one, spouted more disturbing nonsense Wednesday about the situation on a phone call to Fox Business's Mornings with Maria Bartiromo. Asked if the United States would be going to war with the Islamic republic, he fell just short of calling such a war a “cakewalk” for the U.S:
"I hope we don't, but we are in a very strong position," Mr. Trump said. He added, "It wouldn't last very long, I can tell you that. It would not last very long. I'm not talking boots on ground … or sending a million soldiers."
Reporters had asked Trump Tuesday if he had an “exit strategy” in case of war with Iran. He boasted: “You’re not going to need an exit strategy. I don’t need exit strategies.”
Combined, those two remarks sound a good deal like Ken Adelman, who served as assistant to Donald Rumsfeld in his first round as defense secretary in the 1970s and arms-control director under Ronald Reagan. He later became one of the most prominent neoconservatives. His 2002 op-ed in The Washington Post was entitled “Cakewalk in Iraq.” He followed up with “Cakewalk, Revisited” in April 2003, at a time when George Bush was getting ready to strut onto the deck of an aircraft carrier to claim “Mission Accomplished.” He did not, however, write about any cakewalk after nearly 4,600 Americans were killed in that war along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Trump also sounded a lot like ultrahawk Sen. Tom Cotton, who last month said a war with Iran would take “Two strikes: the first strike and a last strike.”
Nobody contests the idea that the world’s strongest military could kill lots of Iranians and blow much of their country’s infrastructure to smithereens. But apparently Trump and certain advisers whispering in his ear have ignored more than two decades’ worth of warnings about what the blowback would be like if the U.S. launched attacks against Iran, which is far larger, far more populous, and fields a much stronger military than Iraq. Indeed, intelligence agencies say Iran’s recent threatening activities are already blowback for Trump’s economic war on Iran after the U.S. withdrew from the nuclear accord and began reimposing economic sanctions last year.
So far, Iran has continued to comply with the accord, including allowing highly intrusive international inspections of its nuclear facilities. But more blowback in consequence of Trump’s wrecking ball will appear on Thursday when Iran exceeds the 660-pound limit on low-enriched uranium, a violation of the accord, and on July 7 when it has threatened to begin enriching LEU to a higher level that would make it easier and quicker to accumulate enough highly enriched weapons-grade uranium to build nuclear weapons, a level of enrichment that would be a crucial violation of the provisions of the accord.
Jon Gambrell at the Associated Press reported Wednesday:
Breaking the stockpile limit by itself doesn’t radically change the one year experts say Iran would need to have enough material for a bomb. Coupled with increasing enrichment, however, it begins to close that window and hamper any diplomatic efforts at saving the accord.
“I worry about the snowball effect,” said Corey Hinderstein, a vice president at the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative who once led the U.S. Energy Department’s Iran task force. “Iran now takes a step which puts Europe and the other members of the deal in an even-tougher position.”
Under terms of the nuclear deal, Iran agreed to have less than 300 kilograms (661 pounds) of uranium enriched to a maximum of 3.67%. Previously, Iran enriched as high as 20%, which is a short technical step away from reaching weapons-grade levels. It also held up to 10,000 kilograms (22,046 pounds) of the higher-enriched uranium.
Ian Stewart, a professor at King’s College London who oversees Project Alpha, an anti-proliferation studies program, fears miscalculations by either Iran or the United States. He told Gambrell, “This highlights the real tension at play in Iran: doing enough to satisfy Iranian hard-liners while also maintaining EU, Chinese and Russian support” for the accord, adding that there’s, “a real risk of miscalculating, not least because it’s not clear at which point the EU will have to back away from a noncompliant Iran.”
Let there be no mistake. If war does happen, it’s on Donald J. Trump and the politicians who have enabled him. The media should be saying so every time Iran comes up. Trump and Republican hawks like Cotton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Adviser John Bolton have brought us to the precipice of war. And we’re being told that if it happens, it will be no big deal. Just a couple of air attacks and over in a few weeks.
Down that road lie countless graves.