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Exactly 23 years ago, I was a Marine headed to the Persian Gulf aboard the same ships now taking thousands of Marines towards Iran today. Many of us had questions about President Bush’s intentions with Iraq, but asking them was not our job. Congress had voted and we had a clear task in front of us.
Today, as a member of the branch of government charged with declaring war, those questions are my job. And after President Trump’s address on Wednesday, the American people have more questions than answers.
Instead of laying out a clear strategy to end this war or reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump offered vague promises of escalation and even veiled threats of war crimes against the Iranian people. Financial markets took a nosedive in real time during his speech, mirroring the same uncertainty and fear that our service members and their families are feeling right now.
WHY TRUMP FACES AN AGONIZING DECISION ON OBLITERATING IRAN’S OIL SUPPLY IF HE CAN’T GET A DEAL
We’ve heard a lot of stated objectives from the Trump administration that seem to shift by the day, from regime change, to ballistic missile “obliteration,” to seizing their oil. Last night it was stopping Iran from projecting power and building a nuclear bomb. Leaving aside that Iran has been projecting power much more violently and effectively since Trump started this war, and he supposedly “obliterated” their nuclear program just last summer, none of the options involving ground troops will help end it.
If Trump is serious about the 2-3 week escalation he outlined on Wednesday night, these are the options he appears to be considering.
The first option is seizing Kharg Island. It’s Iran’s economic center of gravity, but to correct a common misunderstanding, it is not in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s logic seems to be that if you make this war extremely costly from an economic perspective, Iran will cave.
There are two problems with that logic. One, it makes zero sense that Trump is willing to lift sanctions on Iranian oil in an attempt to lower skyrocketing gas prices in the US, but would also be willing to take Iranian oil off the global market entirely by seizing Kharg Island. Two, a hardline theocratic regime is not particularly vulnerable to economic pressure.
His second plan is a risky special operations mission to secure the uranium from the bombed-out vaults in the mountains. The chances such a complex operation goes completely right are small, and even if it succeeds, we would be incredibly naive to think Iran won’t simply enrich more uranium down the line. It also wouldn’t help open the Strait, and it’s unnecessary: Obama accomplished this with a piece of paper back in 2015.
The third plan is forcibly reopening the Strait of Hormuz by occupying the Iranian coast. Such an amphibious assault would require tens or hundreds of thousands of American troops, result in thousands of American casualties, and wouldn’t have a military endgame besides sitting there forever.
Every option runs into the same problem: The regime would still be intact. We removed one older hardline leader and replaced him with a younger one who is even more radical, which leaves us with only one military path: degrading Iran’s capabilities, then leaving and watching them reconstitute and rearm.
TRUMP’S IRAN STRATEGY SHOWCASES ‘DOCTRINE OF UNPREDICTABILITY’ AMID STRIKE THREATS AND SUDDEN PAUSE
The Pentagon’s own reported request for a $200 billion supplemental bill tells you what they think each round will cost. That’s an expensive habit, costing the average taxpayer about $1,300, and costing the families of the troops we lose every time unimaginably more. Are you ready to spend $1,300 on Iran every few years?
That is why the only path that can actually end this war is a negotiated agreement. This is the path President Obama set us on with his nuclear deal. It was imperfect, but it removed the threat of a nuclear Iran, backed up by inspections and constant electronic monitoring. Trump lied when he told the American people Iran wasn’t abiding by it; his own first Administration certified Iran was following it. And it’s telling that most of the nuclear proposals he’s now making were already contained in Obama’s deal.
Unfortunately, Trump has now made getting back to the negotiating table harder than before. Both times the Iranians sat down to talk, he attacked them and, incredibly, Iran actually has more leverage today than it did before by closing the Strait.
IRAN RESPONDS TO REPORTS US WEIGHING GROUND OPERATIONS: ‘WE WILL NEVER ACCEPT HUMILIATION’
Nonetheless, the longer we stay stuck in this mess, the harder it is to get out. The more our goals expand, the harder it will be to claim victory, and the more leverage Iran gains. Just imagine if, a few weeks from now, Iran has captured several American troops and we’re back to the hostage crisis of four decades ago.
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Trump says we need two or three more weeks of war. But he also claims we’ve already achieved our military objectives and have won. Both cannot be true. Either he’s misleading the American people, or he has no clear plan to bring this war to an end.
Iran is not a problem the United States can solve militarily without Americans bearing far higher costs. We are watching that truth play out in real time.
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If the self-described President of Peace does not want to be remembered for the worst strategic blunder in a generation, there is still — barely — time to make a deal.
He says he’s good at that.
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