Trump’s Iran address raises war strategy questions, lawmaker says

Exactly 23 years ago, I was a sailor heading to the Persian Gulf on the same ships that are taking thousands of sailors to Iran today. Many of us had questions about President Bush’s intentions regarding Iraq, but it was not our job to ask them. Congress had voted and we had a clear task before us.

Today, these questions are my job as a member of the government body tasked with declaring war. Following President Trump’s speech on Wednesday, the American people have more questions than answers.

Instead of laying out a clear strategy for ending this war or reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Trump has made vague promises of escalation and even made veiled threats of war crimes against the Iranian people. Financial markets took a massive plunge in real time during his speech; This situation reflects the same uncertainty and fear that our soldiers and their families are feeling right now.

IF TRUMP CAN GET A DEAL, WHY WOULD TRUMP FACE THE ANGRY DECISION TO REMOVE IRAN’S OIL SUPPLY?

We hear the Trump administration state many goals, ranging by the day from regime change to the “destruction” of ballistic missiles to the seizure of their oil. Last night he was preventing Iran from generating power and building a nuclear bomb. Leaving aside that Iran has been flexing its force much more violently and effectively since Trump launched this war, and that he supposedly “destroyed” Iran’s nuclear program just last summer, none of the options involving ground troops will help end this.

If Trump is serious about the 2-3 weeks of tension he outlined Wednesday night, these appear to be the options he’s considering.

The first option is to capture Kharg Island. This is Iran’s economic center of gravity, but let’s correct a common misunderstanding: It is not in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s logic is that if you make this war too economically costly, Iran will cave.

There are two problems with this logic. First, it makes no sense that Trump would be willing to lift sanctions on Iranian oil in order to reduce skyrocketing gas prices in the United States, but would also be willing to completely remove Iranian oil from the global market by seizing Kharg Island. Second, a strictly theocratic regime is not particularly vulnerable to economic pressure.

His second plan is a risky special operations mission to secure uranium from bombed warehouses in the mountains. The chances of such a complex operation going completely well are slim, and even if it were, it would be incredibly naive to think that Iran would not enrich more uranium in the future. It also does not help open the Bosphorus and is unnecessary: ​​Obama achieved this with a piece of paper in 2015.

The third plan is to invade the coasts of Iran and forcefully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Such an amphibious assault would require tens or hundreds of thousands of American troops, would lead to thousands of American deaths, and would have no military endgame other than waiting there indefinitely.

Each option faces the same problem: the regime would still remain intact. We removed an older hardline leader and replaced him with a more radical, younger leader, which leaves us with only one military course: to reduce Iran’s capabilities, then leave and watch them rearm and rearm.

TRUMP’S IRAN STRATEGY SHOWS THE ‘DOCTRINE OF UNPREDICTION’ IN THE ENVIRONMENT OF ATTACK THREATS AND SURPRISE PAUSE

The Pentagon’s request for $200 billion in additional bills shows you how much they think each round will cost. It’s an expensive habit, costing the average taxpayer nearly $1,300 and costing the families of the soldiers we lose unimaginably more each time. Are you prepared to spend $1,300 on Iran every few years?

So the only way to truly end this war is a negotiated agreement. This is the path President Obama set for us with the nuclear deal. It was flawed, but it eliminated the threat of a nuclear Iran, backed by inspections and constant electronic monitoring. Trump lied when he told the American people that Iran was not complying; Iran, whose own first administration certified, was following suit. And that shows that most of the nuclear proposals he’s making now are already in Obama’s deal.

Unfortunately, Trump has now made returning to the negotiating table even more difficult than before. Both times the Iranians sat down to talk, attacked them, and incredibly, Iran has more influence today than it ever had before by closing the Bosphorus.

IRAN RESPONDED TO THE NEWS THAT THE USA HOSTED GROUND OPERATIONS: ‘WE WILL NEVER ACCEPT HUMILIATION’

But the longer we stay stuck in this mess, the harder it is to get out. The broader our goals become, the more difficult it will be to declare victory and the greater Iran’s influence will become. Imagine that a few weeks from now Iran captures several American soldiers and we are back to the hostage crisis of forty years ago.

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Trump says we need two or three more weeks of war. But he also claims that we have already achieved our military goals and won. Both cannot be true. He is either misleading the American people or has no clear plan to end this war.

Iran is not a problem that the United States can solve militarily without the Americans incurring much higher costs. We are watching this truth unfold in real time.

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There is still – very little – time to make a deal, unless the self-styled President of Peace wants to be remembered for the worst strategic mistake in a generation.

He says he’s good at it.

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