In late 2015, President Obama was seeking to bind the United States to a treaty, the JCPOA, that came to be known as the “Iran nuclear deal,” or just the “Iran Deal.”
The Iran Deal, its critics (I among them) argued, would set Iran upon a sure path to a nuclear weapon. Most Americans, in fact, had a sense that this was the case. The fact that President Obama and the Democrats were pressing so hard for the United States to sign on only strengthened this impression.
Given the expressed intentions of the Iranian Revolution regarding Israel and the United States, such a prospect needed to be resisted.
Nevertheless, President Obama refused to back down. Finding he had no pathway to proper ratification of the treaty, which would have required a two-thirds vote in the US Senate, he opted for “Plan B”: signing on to the deal by executive order. With this support and that of its other signatories, the deal went into effect on October 15, 2015.
Joining the Iran Deal in this way gave much of the world the impression that the United States had signed on to the treaty. We had not.
On September 9 of that year, I was on the Mall in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC, at a rally organized in opposition to the Iran Deal. Among the speakers were former assistant to the Attorney General of the United States Mark Levin, economics-professor-turned-congressman Dave Brat, and also two prominent Republican presidential hopefuls: Senator Ted Cruz and Donald J. Trump.
I took the photo above from the press dais.
At that rally, I heard for myself as each of the speakers laid out their case against the Iran Deal, arguing that the United States should not give its support. In particular, I heard both of the presidential hopefuls vow to reverse the deal if President Obama wound up joining by executive order.
One of those two presidential hopefuls gained the Republican nomination and then won the national election. Donald J. Trump took occupancy in the Oval Office on January 20, 2017.
And, wouldn’t you know it? After President Trump took office, he began doing something so unusual as to be actually shocking: He began making good on one campaign promise after another.
- He withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord.
- He moved the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
- And, on May 8, 2018, President Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran Deal.
In the wake of this move, the Iranian Revolution (not to be confused with the Iranian people) has become increasingly belligerent toward the United States. I will not recount all the actions, but one particular series of events in the summer of 2019 is relevant when forming a judgment about the recent actions in which President Trump ordered a targeted strike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020 that killed the General Qasem Soleimani, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s top officer of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the IRGC.
On June 20, 2019, the IRGC shot down a U.S. drone over international airspace in the Strait of Hormuz. At the time, President Trump was advised to take measured retaliatory action in the form of a targeted strike against Iranian radar and missile sites. Indeed, the tactical logic of such a counterstrike was that a demonstration of will in the face of what appeared to be a testing of the waters by the Iranian regime would give fair warning concerning any further aggression, and likely put an end to thoughts of further attacks.
Nevertheless, President Trump made a decision at the eleventh hour to call off the strike, because he was unhappy with the projections of civilian casualties.
The President cannot be faulted for his sense of compassion. It is generally better to err on the side of restraint than on the side of belligerence. However, true to expectations, the Iranian Revolution has continued escalations since that time in the absence of any indication that the current U.S. Administration would take a firm line.
Trump’s decision to ultimately take out Gen. Soleimani in Baghdad, a location that did not require the invasion of Iranian territory, came shortly after a series of these escalations, with the last straw apparently being an Iranian-backed attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on January 2.
Following the killing of Soleimani, some very interesting things have happened.
First, many prominent American Democrats have engaged in severe hand-wringing about a reckless and out-of-control President Trump allegedly leading the United States into World War III.
Of course, none of us know what tomorrow will bring, but sober thought is warranted. First: Iran responded after several days by sending some missiles in the direction of a U.S. base, having alerted the U.S. in advance. No Americans were killed. It is speculated that the purpose of the action was to save face for the Iranian Revolution by making a retaliation against the Americans, but one that intentionally avoided serious damage or the killing of any U.S. person. In other words, a show for the people back home.
It is quite possible that now, finally, balance has been restored, and we will see no more belligerence from Iran in the near future.
THE HUMAN DIMENSION
Iran is filled with wonderful and good people who want to live their lives and go about their business. Many of them think fondly of the United States and of the American people, just as the American people think fondly of them.
Iran is a special land for several reasons, among them the fact that — despite today being a predominantly Muslim nation under a decidedly Muslim government — still preserves a sense of its identity pre-dating the advent of Muhammad and the subsequent conquests that brought Persia under Islamic rule.
It is true that, Islam, and particularly the family of Ali and his sons Hasan and Hossein and the subsequent series of Imams, is very intertwined with the culture and ethos of Iran, and Islam’s influence over more than one thousand years is inescapable there.
The situation in Iran, however, is not one in which the government is representative of the will of the people; most of the world recognizes this and regular Americans are among the most hopeful people anywhere that someday soon the situation will change in Iran in terms of increased freedom.
These are a few of my thoughts as of this time. I may update with further reflections as time passes.