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There
is only so much shallow, ideologically-laced analysis one can take, and
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News personality who remains prominent
in Trump’s orbit, recently found his limit. On Wednesday, he penned an
article-length post under his X handle, passionately explaining why
Levin and the rest of the hawks are not only dead wrong in their
conclusions but deliberately lying to scare Trump into green-lighting
another war in the Middle East. Carlson’s comments are worth reading in full, but this excerpt was particularly revealing:
Mark
Levin was at the White House today, lobbying for war with Iran. To be
clear, Levin has no plans to fight in this or any other war. He’s
demanding that American troops do it. We need to stop Iran from building
nuclear weapons, he and likeminded ideologues in Washington are now
arguing. They’re just weeks away.
If
this sounds familiar, it's because the same people have been making the
same claim since at least the 1990s. It’s a lie. In fact, there is zero
credible intelligence that suggests Iran is anywhere near building a
bomb, or has plans to. None. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignorant or
dishonest. If the US government knew Iran was weeks from possessing a
nuclear weapon, we’d be at war already.
As
an outsider looking in, I can’t verify the palace intrigue. I have no
idea whatsoever if Levin is whispering in Trump’s ear and urging him to
go to war with Iran. Nor can I tell you how effective his pleas would
be. But what I can say is that, on the substance, Carlson is absolutely
right: Trump should in no way, shape, or form be seeking Levin’s counsel
on this subject. The same goes for Bolton, Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, or
any other person who confidently believed that a sticks-only approach to
Iran would over time get the country to cave to U.S. demands.
Three points are worth considering.
First,
to put it kindly, Trump soliciting recommendations from any of these
folks would be about as foolish as JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon soliciting
financial advice from Mike Tyson. This may sound mean or dispiriting,
but this observation is based on facts and the public record. It’s
indisputable, for instance, that everybody on the above list clamored
for Trump to rip up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in
service of a better alternative. The logic behind that strategy was
two-fold: (1) the JCPOA was a horrible deal that ceded too much to the
Iranians (particularly on the issue of nuclear restrictions sunsetting
over a 10-15 time-span), and (2) Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei would have no option but to come crawling back to the
negotiating table on Washington’s terms once U.S. sanctions were
re-imposed.
We
all know how those assumptions turned out. Iran responded to U.S.
economic pressure with pressure of its own. You didn’t need to have a
degree in international relations or Iranian studies to predict this;
small and middle-sized powers who live in a rough neighborhood, are
highly nationalistic, and have a proud history are reticent to roll over
to larger powers for fear of having to succumb to more pressure and
greater demands down the road. Iran possessed all three elements, and it
responded as many of us, at the time, thought that it would—by breaking
out of the nuclear box the JCPOA had created, enriching more uranium,
enriching at higher qualities, fiddling with international inspectors’
ability to monitor Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure, and even attacking civilian oil vessels in the Persian Gulf.
In
short: Trump followed the hawks in his first administration and the
results were a worsening of the problem. Knowing everything we know now,
why on earth would he heed their advice again?
Second,
we ought to be clear about what Levin & Company want: no diplomacy
and no deal. They aren’t interested in supporting Trump’s negotiations
with Tehran because they don’t believe you can truly negotiate with the
Iranians in the first place. The entire concept of sitting down with an
adversary is an otherworldly concept to them, akin to losing before the
game even starts. To be fair, this isn’t unique to them; Washington, DC
is full of think tankers, consultants, and ex-officials who wrongly
equate diplomacy to weakness, if not surrender. In reality, it’s how
international problems are managed and resolved—it’s what Richard Nixon
did with China, what Ronald Reagan did with the Soviet Union, and what
Trump himself did with the Houthis weeks ago. If you tie one hand behind
your back and leave out negotiations, then you’re depriving yourself of
a key tool of statecraft. That doesn’t serve U.S. interests.
Finally,
let’s assume for a moment that diplomacy falls apart and military
strikes become the Trump administration’s top option. Would this option
even work as the proponents intend?
Sure,
a lot of lead and iron would land on the Iranian nuclear apparatus.
Some of the centrifuge facilities and plants above ground would be
destroyed. Some of the wings below ground, like at Natanz and Fordow,
might be destroyed as well. Iranian scientists, technicians, and
engineers would be killed, and the country would lose at least some of
its enrichment capability. Nobody is disputing this, and it would be
dishonest not to acknowledge it.
But
in solving the Iranian nuclear problem, military force is akin to
slapping a band-aid on a patient who needs life-support. At best, it’s a
delaying tactic, and the delay would be far shorter than what the U.S.
could get from even an imperfect agreement. The Iranians, facing what is
essentially an act of war perpetrated by the United States, would be
highly unlikely to surrender their nuclear program in full. In fact, the
opposite is more likely—those facilities would be re-built, deeper
underground, and spread out over larger swaths of the country. The
International Atomic Energy Agency, which currently has a presence in
Iran, wouldn’t be able to monitor any of this activity, since Tehran is
likely to kick out inspectors after any U.S. bombing operation is over.
Khamenei, who hasn’t yet pulled the trigger on nuclear weaponization
despite the salacious claims made by Levin and others, would have all
the more reason to sprint towards a nuclear deterrent to prevent similar
attacks from happening again. The U.S. would then be presented with two
options: do the entire bombing campaign over again or accept the fact
that Washington’s reckless actions in the first instance have created a
world in which Iran is a member of the nuclear club.
None
of this even mentions Iranian retaliation outside of the nuclear file.
Supporters of the military option consistently overestimate America’s
power and underestimate Iran’s capacity for retaliation. Missile strikes
on U.S. bases in the Middle East—particularly in Iraq—renewed attacks
against oil shipments and plants in the Gulf, and Iranian-sponsored
terrorist attacks inside the Middle East are all possibilities. And
because the U.S. foreign policy establishment thinks it’s a stellar idea
to have 40,000 or so U.S. troops based in the region on a
quasi-permanent basis, the Iranians would have plenty of targets to
choose from.
All
of which is a long way of saying that if Trump, in seeking sound
advice, has to choose between Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson, Trump
should go with Carlson.
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