{"id":110872,"date":"2025-06-22T19:26:29","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T00:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=110872"},"modified":"2025-06-22T19:26:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T00:26:29","slug":"110872","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=110872","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Five Takes on Bombing Iran<\/a>
\nFrom the department of Earth-shattering kabooms<\/p>\n

\"Bomb<\/p>\n

People have been singing about it since 1980, but yesterday\u2019s bombing raids on Iranian nuclear facilities were the first bombing attack since the 1979 hostage seizure.<\/p>\n

Despite numerous calls for action against the Islamic Republic,\u00a0Operation Midnight Hammer<\/a>\u00a0was the first U.S. military action against important Iranian assets on Iranian territory. The bombs fell less than 24 hours ago, but here are a few preliminary takes.<\/p>\n

Competence.<\/em>\u00a0The most striking thing about the attacks was the extreme competence displayed by the Air Force, the Defense Department under Secretary Pete Hegseth, the various intelligence assets involved, the State Department, and the entire administration. There were no leaks. (How did they avoid leaks? Basically, they didn\u2019t tell any Democrats what was coming. Take note.)<\/p>\n

Not only were there no leaks, but President Trump and the diplomatic apparatus kept the Iranians in the dark, giving the impression of waffling in the White House even as things were being lined up. They received unintentional help in this from Sen. Charles Schumer, who had been for some time pushing the \u201cTACO\u201d acronym \u2014 Trump Always Chickens Out \u2014 in the service of a storyline that Trump was all bluster and no follow-through. The Iranians, apparently dumb enough to believe Democrats and the mainstream news media (but I repeat myself) were snookered.<\/p>\n

New Diplomacy:<\/em>\u00a0In dealing with the Iranians in the 1980s, Donald Regan told President Reagan that America had been repeatedly\u00a0\u201csnookered\u201d<\/a>\u00a0by a bunch of \u201crug merchants.\u201d The Iranians were in fact very good at leading Americans down the garden path, invoking (often imaginary) splits between \u201chard-line\u201d and \u201cmoderate\u201d Islamists in their government as excuses for delay and backtracking.<\/p>\n

In truth, as Henry Kissinger once said,\u00a0\u201cAn Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0After these raids, and the many Israeli attacks that led up to them, all of Iran is out of ammunition.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see if moderation follows. (I doubt it, as I think the \u201cirrational regime hypothesis\u201d applies heavily to Iran. See below.) But one thing that follows is that threats and deadlines from the Trump administration, unlike those from the Obama and Biden administrations, will be taken seriously in the future. Obama\u2019s\u00a0\u201cred line\u201d<\/a>\u00a0was bluster; Trump\u2019s was not. He gave the Iranians a deadline and when they failed to comply, he destroyed their nuclear capability.<\/p>\n

For a couple of decades after World War II, U.S. diplomacy was backed by the belief that words would be backed by force. After a while, our foreign policy elite began to see diplomacy as a substitute for force, not an adjunct to it. As soon as that happened, diplomacy lost most of its power. \u201cJaw jaw\u201d as Churchill said, may be better than \u201cwar war,\u201d but the jawing mostly works because war is the alternative. If the alternative is just more jawing, not so much.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly the author of \u201cThe Art of the Deal\u201d knew this.<\/p>\n

The Humiliation of the Foreign Policy Establishment<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had \u201cMiddle East experts\u201d for years. Their track record, as the above suggests, has been poor. Our universities have departments of \u201cMiddle East Studies,\u201d who have mostly pumped out poorly informed activists, and horrible takes by risible faculty members. Their existence has revolved around the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is in the process of disappearing as the Arab nations have all reached accommodations with Israel, and as the Palestinians suffer humiliating defeat, and the loss of their last major patron, Iran, which will be in no position to help them financially or militarily any time soon, if ever.<\/p>\n

Well, an establishment that is organized around a problem is unlikely to go about actually\u00a0solving<\/em>\u00a0that problem: What will its high-paid people, in prestigious jobs, do if that happens?<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the solutions were always pretty simple, it just took someone from outside the field to find them. Trump brought Arabs and Israelis together under the Abraham Accords in his first term; now he\u2019s bringing Iran to heel in his second. In both cases it took a willingness to be hard-nosed, and to say and do things that were anathema before because they would have interfered with big donations from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc.<\/p>\n

Keep It Simple, Stupid.<\/em>\u00a0And that\u2019s a bigger lesson regarding the Trump approach. Our establishment at some level\u00a0wants<\/em>\u00a0things to be complicated and intractable. Solving problems makes them go away, which is unfortunate. We were told before that addressing illegal immigration across the borders required legislation from Congress that would be complicated and require the greasing of lots of interests. Instead Trump just enforced the law, and illegal border crossing basically stopped. We were told that government spending was impossible to control and DOGE showed us otherwise. Obama told us we couldn\u2019t drill our way out of oil shortages. Turned out Sarah Palin was right and \u201cdrill baby, drill\u201d did just that \u2014 not so coincidentally also strengthening our hand in bringing about the Abraham Accords, etc. Iran\u2019s nuclear program, we were told, was just something we\u2019d have to live with, only it turned out it was something the Iranians could die with.<\/p>\n

Our Political Class is Full of Traitors, Liars, and Fools.<\/em>\u00a0Okay, this isn\u2019t really news. I\u2019ve been pointing out for over two decades that the \u201canti-war\u201d movement isn\u2019t so much antiwar as just on the other side. But the speed with which mobs waving Hamas flags turned into mobs waving Mexican flags and then into mobs waving Iranian flags \u2014 al with support from pretty much the same gang of pundits and politicians \u2014 has been truly striking. Ed Morrissey points out Democrats\u2019\u00a0\u201cbreathtaking hypocrisy\u201d on War Powers,\u00a0<\/a>and of course, it would be more breathtaking if it were any sort of surprise.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Democrats thought it was fine when Obama did it because Lightbringer.
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