Journalists Cover (for) Iran Betrayal

A Vox piece carried by Yahoo! News promises speculation on "four possible reasons" for Trump's waffling on his threat to attack Iran if the Ayatollahs killed any protesters.

The Iranian regime has admitted murdering thousands since then, blaming the "deaths" on the United States and Israel.

Donald Trump's response?

So far, I hear crickets, and the barbaric clerics remain in power.

As I imagine many would do upon seeing such a headline, and hoping there could be legitimate reasons for a delay, I read the piece. Its four reasons are weak sauce, and sound like the usual left-wing excuses to tolerate hostile regimes.

Worse, the results of decades of bad American foreign policy will make these excuses sound more credible than they should, even to people who realize that American foreign policy should be one of self-interest.

The "reasons," as summarized by section headings are below, followed by my brief comments:

• Will the US lose credibility? -- Our leaders have a long history of laying out "red lines" and then either still doing nothing, or not doing enough. Trump doing nothing will certainly damage what little credibility we have left. This regime is so evil that its downfall alone would be an enormous net benefit. It's hard to imagine how Trump doing enough to make this happen could hurt American self-interest, especially if he also unleashes Israel, which he should have done after we hit Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities.
• Will it create new problems? -- This drops the entire context of the decades of worldwide problems the current regime has already caused and will definitely try to cause in the future, if it is left in place.
• Would it accomplish anything? -- As opposed to not acting? Given America's decades of appeasement and half-measures, it's an understandable question, but it's not the right one.
• Will it create false hope? -- If the last question was wrong, this one is obscene. Trump promising aid, and then reneging is what would have created false hope, and led to thousands of people -- who might have waited for more promising circumstances before acting -- to put their lives on the line prematurely. I am dubious about how well-thought-out an Iranian rebellion has been or could be, but it should say something that the people are out there facing bullets.

The piece ends as follows:

This story is still far from over, and intervention is still very much on the table, but the people of Iran would hardly be the first to rise up against an autocratic government with America’s encouragement, only to find that there are limits to how far the US was actually willing to go to support them.

I doubt that anyone expects the United States to do everything for them, and this is true, as far as it goes, but it would be fair to condemn our previous administrations for paying lip service to freedom, without backing those words up meaningfully.

This regime is weak, and it would be short work for us to destroy enough of its military and state police capacity to topple it. That would be in our interest, and it would have been fine for Trump to have communicated such an offer with limits, rather than grandstanding, as I am afraid he has done.

-- CAV