America at War
What I have to say about the US dropping bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities is very similar to what I said a few days ago about Israel launching attacks on those facilities and other Iranian infrastructure.
Trump and Netanyahu are both deeply flawed leaders that I do not trust. Both are corrupt and continually put their self-interest above the interests of their people. Trump is even worse than Netanyahu: he is doing great damage to America by blocking scientific research, halting foreign aid, appointing unqualified hacks to the cabinet and other senior government positions among other faults. He sowed revolution with January 6, pardoned people who attacked police officers, deployed troops in Los Angeles against the wishes of local law enforcement, and sows division and chaos wherever he goes.
Yet – the Jewish tradition is “anti cancel culture.” As we learned in a session I led yesterday, the Jewish tradition acknowledges that even great people can do terrible things, and terrible people can on occasion do great things. Virtue is not an “all or nothing” proposition.
Trump did the right thing in dropping bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran has been the greatest trouble maker in the Middle East for decades. It has financed and trained terrorist organizations in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, and Syria. It propped up Assad. For years Israel was willing to try and contain the threats supported by Iran by “mowing the grass” every few years – the IDF’s expression for occasional bouts that were intended to deter Hamas and Hezbollah from doing anything crazy. That calculus changed on October 7, 2023. Hamas proved themselves capable of doing serious damage. The evil needed to be confronted.
Iran wanted Hamas’s attack to happen when it did because Israel was close to being even further integrated into the Middle East with the prospect of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. That would have greatly weakened Iran’s “axis of resistance.”
As Thomas Friedman pointed out in an op-ed today, the war against Iran and the war between Russia and Ukraine is all part of the same struggle: the struggle between forces that favor internationalism and the free flow of goods and people, and the authoritarian forces that prefer to have their spheres of influence that allow them to maintain their autocratic power and their ability to strip the treasuries of their countries. Forces that are motivated by visions of restoring past glory (the Soviet Union, the caliphate).
Iran has been continually lying about their nuclear program. You don’t build a facility like Fordow, putting your enrichment infrastructure under a mountain, if the program is for peaceful purposes. You don’t spend a trillion dollars (according to one estimate I saw) on a peaceful nuclear program if you have lots of oil and abundant sunshine. The UN watchdog found Iran has violated the agreements it made. Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, and the time was right to take away their ability to do so.
How will it play out? Nobody knows. Regime change is a possibility, but not a guarantee. With there being approximately zero chance of ground forces invading Iran to make regime change happen, who leads Iran in the future will be up to the Iranian people. We can wish them well, but that’s about it.
There are risks. It’s possible Iran has enough nuclear material for a bomb squirreled away someplace we don’t know about. It’s possible they will do some desperate maneuvers, such as trying to block the Straits of Hormuz, or attacking other countries’ oil infrastructure. I don’t think they have the capability left to seriously harm the US forces in the region.
Were Trump’s motives pure? Were Netanyahu’s? I don’t know. In a way I don’t care. I would rather in this case that they do the right thing for wrong reasons than the wrong thing for the right reasons. But I do know the liberals who immediately criticize anything Trump or Netanyahu does because of who is doing it are wrong.
I pray for a quick end to the violence between Israel, Iran, and Gaza. I pray that deals are put in place that stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions once and for all, and that gets the hostages in Gaza released and Gaza on a path to rebuilding. May it be speedily and in our time.
