Escalation in Iran Would Be Madness

The people urging the U.S. to escalate are fanatics and ideologues who just want to see Iran in ruins no matter what it takes.

Seth Cropsey makes another deranged appeal for escalation against Iran:

Mr. Trump’s objective shouldn’t be to bluff the Iranians out. Instead it should be to demonstrate that if push comes to shove, the U.S. will commit to an overwhelming confrontation that breaks the Iranian state economically and politically. An air campaign approximating the war’s first week, which disoriented Iranian capabilities, is possible now that the dust has settled around Iran’s leadership.

Defeating Iran is paramount. On a successful outcome rests the credibility of American deterrence, the safety of international sea lanes, a return to the normalcy of global energy markets, and the regional stability that is key to all these goods. The president should finish what he rightly started.

Further escalation will be costly, and it is unlikely to deliver the defeat that hawks desperately want. Iran has demonstrated that it can and will retaliate in kind, so more attacks on its civilian infrastructure will provoke new waves of attacks on the Gulf states and Israel. According to recent reports, Iran retains far more of its missiles and missile launchers than the administration initially claimed, so they do not lack the means to carry out reprisals.

The U.S. and Israel have shown that they can cause plenty of death and destruction, but they have been remarkably unsuccessful in making any lasting gains. A new round of bombing will likely be no more successful in forcing Iran to yield. Escalation will simply intensify the conflict to no one’s benefit.

The president recklessly launched a criminal war for no reason, and he lost. Persisting in this disastrous course would be madness. Defeating Iran isn’t worth the enormous costs that would be required. The U.S. does not need to defeat Iran. There is a much quicker, cheaper path to restoring normalcy and stability, and that is by lifting the blockade and ending the war.

In case it wasn’t obvious, Iran hawks don’t want a return to normalcy and stability. They can’t stand the idea that Iran might emerge intact from the war they have been seeking for decades. They wish to see Iran thrown into chaos and bloodshed, and they don’t care how many Iranians, Americans, and others pay the price.

The people urging the U.S. to escalate are fanatics and ideologues who just want to see Iran in ruins no matter what it takes. Iran hawks have cheered the president on as he embarked on a disastrous, unnecessary war, and now they would rather cause even more death and destruction than acknowledge that their preferred policy has failed. This is not in the best interests of the United States, the Iranian people, the region, or the world.

Trump would be remarkably foolish to escalate, but I fear that will be his default option. He can’t admit failure and won’t settle for less than Iranian surrender, so he has limited himself to the bad options of trying to strangle Iran with his blockade or launching more attacks. There have been several reports that the U.S. may start bombing again in the next few days. The president has once again been making insane threats against Iran on social media, and it would be a mistake to assume that he won’t follow through on them this time.

The president lacks the wisdom to pull the plug on his war, so Congress will have to do it for him. The funding for this operation must be cut off. If this Congress won’t do its job, it falls to us to elect one that will. In the meantime, the people of Iran and poor and starving people around the world will be made to suffer for the stupidity and arrogance of our evil leaders.