So, I guess we are at war with Iran now... or not? Maybe this will sprawl into yet another forever war in the Middle East, or maybe the bombings are going to stop in a few days, and we will look back on this in two months and be like, "Remember when we killed the Ayatollah? That was wild, huh?" the way we are now with the capture of Nicolás Maduro. I could see it going either way, with the latter being the more preferable of the two, by far.
Whatever the case, it certainly adds to the already unsustainably high instability in not just that region, but the world at large, and that is not a good thing. I don't see how this advances American interests. Iran, under its current (former?) regime, poses a threat in spirit to the US (they definitely hate us and often wish death upon us), but they're on the other side of the globe, and by all reports they don't have the weaponry to reach us. Of course, they could develop such weaponry, which would be very bad for us, so I understand bombing their military infrastructure, but killing their top leaders and telling the Iranian people to overthrow the government is a whole other animal. How is this going to be different from the other three times we've tried and failed at this in the past 40 years?
To be clear, I'm not exactly an expert on the geopolitics of the Middle East, but neither, I think it's safe to say, is our president. And that's another reason I don't like this. I don't trust the manchild in the White House to put the interests of the American people first and foremost. He does things almost completely based on his own self-interest and his own warped perception of how he's perceived by the rest of the world. And I suspect/fear that that's what is going on here also. In his first term, he tore up Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, I suspect, not because he thought the terms were unfavorable to the US (I honestly don't think he could describe the terms), but because it was Obama's deal. If it was the exact same thing, but he got credit for it, he surely would have been touting how great it was.
So, then he tried to broker a different deal with Iran, and he got nowhere, because Iran's government is largely fueled by obstinacy and hostility toward the US. They would rather die than accept anything that makes them look subservient to the infidels (and for some of them that is exactly what happened). I imagine the president took this all very personally, because that's the only way he ever takes anything, and he lost his patience, and when a guy with the temperament and insecurities of a middle school bully has the backing of a very powerful army (and a Netanyahu in his ear), this is the result we're all gonna get. One of the few things I liked about our president is that he seemed to not be a warmonger. Now, even that minutely redeeming quality is gone. It's not great.
To end on a positive note, it is genuinely heartwarming to see all these Iranian citizens and expats, who have been oppressed and terrorized by the government for years, to celebrate their freedom, fleeting though it may be. It makes me look at everything I've written above, and think to myself, But who am I to say to these people, "No, actually this is a bad thing"? But then I think about what lies ahead and wonder will it actually be any better for them. I don't have great responses to any of this. It's almost as if life is full of unanswerable questions, impossible tradeoffs, and moral ambiguities. The only thing I know for sure is that I don't really know anything and neither does anybody else. I'm very Socratic that way.
Until next time...
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