Imminent Threat? Iran Was Existential Threat

Politics, they say, makes strange bedfellows. War apparently makes even stranger enemies.

Denying that Iran was an imminent threat

Donald Trump’s decision to fulfill the promise of eight American presidents since 1979 to bring justice to the Iranian terror-sponsoring regime has not just elicited predictable outrage on the left, it has ripped apart the uneasy conservative alliance which brought Trump back to power last year.

The resignation last week of Joe Kent as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center brought into sharp focus the deep divide between Trump and many of those who supported him on the false assumption that he opposed the use of force against foreign enemies, when in fact he has consistently treated it as a tool to be used when necessary.

In his resignation letter, Kent wrote:

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.

That is the same argument being made by Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, and others in right-wing circles. But it is, of course, a specious argument that would substitute appeasement for action. Claiming that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States ignores history, intelligence, and the proclamations of the leadership of the Islamic regime itself.

Kent goes the blood libel route

Kent made the case in his resignation letter that

high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined [Trump’s] America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.

This is nothing less than a post-modern blood libel – directed not at Jews as a people, but at the Jewish state itself. By casting blame for the American fatalities on Israel, Kent and others are simply looking for a scapegoat to justify their own unwillingness to act to protect the U.S. and our allies from the predictable chaos promised by the late Ayatollah Khamenei and both his predecessor and successor.

Among the worst pronouncements assigning blame to Israel for U.S. involvement in the war in Iran was that of podcaster Megyn Kelly shortly after the start of the conflict.

The guys and the gals who have to actually carry out this mission … why again? And put their lives on the line … for whom, again? … My own feeling is no one should have to die for a foreign country. I don’t think those four service members died for the United States. I think they died for Iran or for Israel.

She further argued that

Our government’s job is not to look out for Iran or for Israel. It’s to look out for us.

What a sanctimonious pile of ahistorical bunk! American soldiers have died for foreign countries for well over a century. Were the sacrifices of the GIs in World War II to be called into question because they died for France, for Britain, for the Philippines? And for that matter, should we send reparations to France to repay them for their role in ensuring George Washington’s victory in the Revolutionary War?

Accountability, not avoidance

Absurd. What the American public demands of our military decision makers, including the commander in chief, is accountability – not avoidance. After the prolonged conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we are justifiably wary of “boots on the ground” that have no clear marching orders or that are driven by unrealistic goals. This conflict, however, is measured in weeks so far, not years. If it drags on for months without clear objectives – let alone years – then the comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan will write themselves.

At the same time, we do not want the United States to be a paper tiger, incapable of defending our interests and protecting our allies while our adversaries pursue their expansionist goals unchecked. Denying that Iran was an imminent threat is a red herring. Does imminent mean tomorrow? Next year? Next decade?

Doesn’t matter. Any serious student of the Middle East knows that an unrestrained Iran is not just an imminent threat; it is an existential threat. Not just to Israel or the United States, but to any country that does not follow its fundamentalist Shi’ite philosophy.

Iran is a nation of Twelvers

That’s because Iran’s mullahs believe in the impending return of the Twelfth Imam, or Mahdi, an apocalyptic figure who will rise to destroy their enemies. The Ayatollah Khamenei and other high-ranking Iranians have believed that they can hasten the return of this Islamic messiah by engaging in jihad against the West as well as against mainstream Sunni Islam.

From their point of view they have nothing to lose, and no reason to negotiate in good faith. Chaos is their goal, and if the Western alliance doesn’t take their threats seriously, the result could well be Armageddon.

If Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson think President Trump has gone too far by pushing back against the Iranian menace, then they might as well start calling themselves Obama Republicans because they are following the lead of the president who tried to avoid war with Iran by sending them a planeload of cash.

That payoff typified Barack Obama’s playbook regarding Iran: Wait for the threat to become undeniable, and in the meantime hope it never arrives. Like today’s antiwar zealots, Obama failed to recognize Islamic terrorism as an imminent threat. Instead he worried about something called “violent extremism,” and lumped Islamic jihad in with Jim Crow and the Crusades.

Charles Lindbergh and his anti-heroic foreign-policy doctrine

Back in 2015, I called Obama the “Charles Lindbergh of American presidents,” and that title describes the kind of neutered “America First” foreign policy that Carlson and his followers want to pursue. Just as Lindbergh wanted to prevent America from fighting the threat of Nazi savagery, these new isolationists would have us ignore the threat of Islamic terrorism until the nuke arrives at Grand Central Station. The rest of the world be damned.

With any luck, Joe Kent’s resignation letter will be a wake-up call – but not the one he intended. Perhaps it will remind Americans that the real danger is not decisive action against a hostile regime, but the creeping belief that we must wait until danger is undeniable before we respond to it.

That is not prudence. It is paralysis.

The 13 American service members who have died in this conflict made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of their country and its interests. Their loss is tragic, and it demands accountability from those who sent them into harm’s way. But accountability does not mean inaction. It does not mean pretending that threats disappear simply because they are not scheduled on a calendar.

Don’t wait for the attack. Head it off.

If we adopt Kent’s standard – that force is justified only in the face of an “imminent” attack – then we are choosing to act only when the danger is unmistakable and too close to prevent. In other words, after the embassy is overrun, the city struck, and the weapon used.

That is not a strategy. That is surrender dressed up as restraint.

The lesson of history is not that America has intervened too soon, but that it has too often waited too long. Iran’s regime has spent decades declaring its intentions, funding terrorism, and working toward the means to carry out its threats. To insist that none of this constitutes an “imminent” danger is to redefine the word into meaninglessness.

A nation that refuses to confront an existential threat until it becomes immediate will eventually face a threat it can no longer contain.

That is the real choice before us – not war or peace, but foresight or regret.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.