For his full-throated support of the Iran operation, the one-time maverick politician John Fetterman of Pennsylvania has roused considerable ire among many Democrats. Fetterman has said he is baffled by the objections several congressional Democrats have raised against the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that have killed Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Khamanei and 47 other top leaders of the dictatorial Iran regime.
Although no elected Democrats have publicly rushed to stand by Fetterman, it’s unlikely he is the only Democrat in the Senate or House who feels that way. That puts him, and them, way outside the views of rank-and-file Democrats polled on the subject. The most recent poll, Reuters-Ipsos, shows only 27% of Americans approve of the U.S. strikes in Iran, while 43% disapprove and 29% are unsure. Of Democrats: 74% disapprove and 7% approve.
Before going further, so that nobody gets the wrong idea, let me be clear about my feelings on the Iranian leadership, as noted three days before the attack in my If Trump goes all in against Iran, it would fulfill the neoconservatives' fondest dream:
To be clear, Iran’s autocratic, theocratic, lethally homophobic and misogynistic regime, with its medieval punishments and terrorist mission, deserves to be toppled even though there’s more than a little irony that the pursuit of no nukes for Iran is proceeding at the same time Russia, China, the United States, and the UK are all involved in massive upgrades in what are already the largest nuclear arsenals on Earth. For the outcome of any ouster of the leadership to be positive, it is a job for Iranians. The U.S. can support this in various ways, but assaults on Iran that kill thousands — 900 Iranian civilians were killed by the anti-nuclear strikes eight months ago — would be counterproductive to longterm stability.
As for my pre-attack view on how things might go after Trump announced a week ago that there needed to be an agreement within 10 to 15 days:
Trump is notorious for using “a couple of weeks” as the time-frame for announcing big progress or big plans that never come. However, bogus time-frames can serve tactical purposes. Remember that last June after he warned Tehran that it had two weeks to get serious about negotiations, he only waited 30 hours before — surprise! — sending the B-2s to blast Iran’s deep underground nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow, something the Israeli Air Force could not.
On Saturday, a very similar “surprise” was undertaken, this one with an enhancement: a daylight attack instead of nighttime; public statements indicating negotiations would continue when the date for the attack had been settled weeks before.
Of course, Trump isn’t a military genius, to say the least, and deception in warfare dates, in written form at least, as far back as Sun Tzu. But with the dreadful exception of the 165 or more people, including children, killed in a school near an Iranian naval base, the first day of that operation went about as well as any general could have wished. This could, of course, have been done the same way with the congressional approval that the Constitution requires. But the operation’s implementation isn’t the issue.
Given the sinister nature of the mullahs’ regime, it’s easy to understand the joy of the exiles of the Iranian diaspora dancing in the streets from Vancouver to Los Angeles to Madrid to Berlin to Shiraz to Fuladshahr, and yet be simultaneously furious at the unilateral violation of international and domestic law Trump undertook. If the regime in Tehran collapses, Iranians might unite all their many factions into, if not a democratic state, at least far less repressive than it has been. Or the consequences could be catastrophic, a civil war, a strengthening of ISIS or al Qaeda or some fresh group of fundamentalist fanatics, along with heightened terror across the globe and new terrors for Iranians at home.
Is our Outlaw Prez attacking Iran because he needs to distract from the Trump-Epstein polls, because the Iranians were supposedly restoring their nuclear development program after June’s “obliteration,” because the ayatollah planned to kill him, because the oil interests wanted it, or because he just wants to build Trump Towers in Tehran and Isfahan the way he wants to own a glittering beach resort in Gaza? Whatever the case, the one thing you can be certain of is that his concern for the well-being of the viciously repressed Iranian people is about as genuine as a crocodile’s post-dinner apology.
Which brings us back to John Fetterman. As noted in the headline, the senator has a right to his opinions. He clearly thinks the operation was the right thing to do and apparently has zero problem with the White House refusing to seek the required go-ahead from Congress. On Foxaganda, he said: “I’m tired of seeing people on social media saying “we can never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb.” … Well, if you’re not willing to do anything about it, then it must just be empty words… @POTUS did try to negotiate with them … That never worked.”
I guess the Senator is too young to remember President Barack Obama who, in fact, did make negotiations work, arriving in 2015 after 20 months at an agreement greatly curtailing Iran’s nuclear program until Donald J. Trump trashed it for being the “worst deal ever” and asserted he would make a better one. Nor apparently is Fetterman aware that EVERY president since Reagan has said Iran can never have a nuke while certain people kept saying: Bomb, bomb, bomb them!
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the 2015 agreement is called, wasn’t perfect. But it slowed Iran’s nuclear development, which the regime has long claimed is for peaceful purposes only despite being caught two decades ago working toward a nuclear weapon. Although the JCPOA was never directly voted on in the Senate, that was because a cloture vote on a resolution disapproving the agreement got only 58 of the 60 needed votes. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer, Ben Cardin (now retired), and Bob Menendez (now in a cell) voted yes; that is, against the JCPOA.
Two weeks after Trump withdrew from the agreement nearly eight years ago, in its sixth quarterly report on the JCPOA published in May 2018, the International Atomic Energy Agency found — as it had in the previous five reports — that Iran had complied with all the restrictions placed on it. Come May 2025 and the IAEA report was very different. Why?
Trump’s unilateral move to withdraw vindicated the hard-liners of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who had opposed the agreement long before it was signed. Supreme Leader Khamanei had ultimately told them to stand down.
The agreement mandated that Iran reduce what was then a stockpile of 10,000 kilograms (22,000 pounds) of low-level enriched uranium (U-235) to 300 kg (661 lbs). It allowed that enrichment only reach 3.67%, the level needed for power-plant fuel. After the U.S. withdrawal, in a step-by-step process that it announced publicly, Iran gradually enriched hundreds of pounds of uranium to 20% and then 60% concentration, still short of but much closer to weapons grade. Before the June bombing, Iran had spun its centrifuges long enough to accumulate nearly 1,000 lbs of uranium at that level. Enough when concentrated further for nine nuclear bombs.
From what we’ve heard about the Geneva negotiations that were still going on two days before Trump’s Feb. 28 attack was launched, it’s unknown (at least to those of us without security clearances) how much of that concentrated uranium Iran has left after the Operation Midnight Hammer bombing and the attacks still ongoing against Iran.
Whatever the case, as Sen. Fetterman ought to know, the situation would be very different today if Trump hadn’t dismissed the 2015 deal that was keeping Iran from doing what it ultimately did and instead embraced his promise to make a better deal. Instead, as with so many of his promises, he reneged. Negotiations can work. In this case they had worked until Trump sabotaged their outcome in his first term. What’s baffling, Senator, aren’t the views of your fellow elected Democrats, but your fulsome support for Trump’s perilous, illegal move.
