Facing Scylla and Charybdis in Iran

I genuinely don't envy Trump the choice that he faces in Iran. Bibi has very skillfully maneuvered him into a corner. I wish both Israel and the U.S. had better, more trustworthy leadership at this moment. 

 

From the Israeli perspective, this war is certainly justified. It is only a "preemptive" war in the sense that it was not predicated on a direct attack against Israel by Iranian forces. But Iran was a key supporter of Hamas in the years before 10/7, and remained a staunch supporter of Hamas, both directly and through proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels of Yemen, in the immediate aftermath of 10/7 and up until the present moment. In that sense, this is a classic case of "you mess with the bull, you get the horns."

 

But the questions of whether this war is justified and whether it is strategically wise are very distinct questions. Israel can only benefit strategically if one of two things happens: 1)they bring the current government of Iran down; 2)they destroy Iran's nuclear program.

 

The first goal is not likely. If Saddam Hussein was not able to effect regime change in Iran after almost a decade of war and the loss of one million Iraqi lives, the Israelis are not likely to bring down the ayatollahs with bombs, however sophisticated they may be. The Iranian theocracy has enjoyed the support of a critical mass of its own people for more than four decades through successive crises, I doubt that this is the moment it will collapse.

 

The second goal of destroying Iran's nuclear program militarily is more tractable, but as The New York Times explains, will almost certainly require American assistance. The main Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow is buried too deeply underground for Israeli ordinance to reach. A commando raid might destroy the facility, but Bibi Netanyahu is a political animal, not a bold or effective military leader (he allowed 10/7 to happen, after all), so I would be surprised if he ordered such a raid and risked the political damage of seeing Israel's most elite soldiers killed or (even worse, from Bibi's perspective) captured and paraded on Iranian television in chains.

 

Thus the final military objective of destroying Fordow can only be achieved with US planes and bombs, which Bibi knew going into this. Will Trump allow himself to be strongarmed into backing Bibi's play? Should he? I honestly don't know for certain. I can see the merit of joining this military effort from the perspective of the U.S.- preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon is a worthwhile goal, given the history of Iran's policy in the Middle East.

 

But a military solution of the Iranian nuclear threat can only ever be temporary in the absence of regime change. If Fordow is destroyed, the Iranian's will rebuild their nuclear program, however many years it takes. More than that, destroying Iran's nuclear program militarily now is likely to make the Iranians determined to rebuild their nuclear program EVEN IF REGIME CHANGE OCCURS. 

 

Those outside Iran who think that Iranians want a nuclear weapon because they are religious fanatics are seriously mistaken. The Iranians don't want a nuclear weapon because they are religious fanatics. They want a nuclear weapon because they are a nation that has been struggling for self-determination against the constant meddling of colonial and neocolonial powers such as Britain, the US, and the USSR. The only way to permanently quell the nuclear threat from Iran is to bring them back into the community of nations and provide the Iranian people with a framework of diplomatic relationships and guarantees that will safeguard their sovereignty.

 

I would not lay any bets on how this current crisis will end. I still fear that it will not end well, because character is destiny, and both Trump and Bibi are rotten to the core. I pray that I am wrong, and that in any case the people of Israel, Iran, and the US will all suffer as little as possible on the path to the end of this immediate conflict.

Riddle Me This

 

"Liberation Day" has revealed how ill equipped all of our institutions are to deal with the second Trump administration. So many different rationales have been given for the imposition of our new tariff regime that it is impossible to formulate a coherent picture of why this policy is happening and what we can expect moving forward. Are the tariffs permanent? Are they a negotiating tactic?  Is the goal to return manufacturing to the United States? To pay for tax cuts? To reduce the deficit? No one can say for sure, and the administration is making no effort to clarify the matter. Quite the contrary.

 Despite this atmosphere of pervasive confusion, pundits and officials cannot resist the impulse to try and make sense of the morass. Statements by Trump or some combination of his advisors are sifted through for clues.  Accusations of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" will no doubt rain down fast and thick. 

Any debate over the policy logic or goals of "Liberation Day" is wasted effort, perhaps deliberately so. It is much easier, as is virtually always the case with Trump, to examine the political logic behind this newest campaign. In some respects the political logic of the new tariff regime falls in line with what we have seen from Trump past. Polarization is his game, and the new tariff regime is nothing if not polarizing.

But in important respects "Liberation Day" has launched Trump into new political waters. He has very frequently lied or contradicted himself, but he has not completely reversed himself rhetorically in so grandiose a fashion. After spending three years on the campaign trail promising that he will bring prices down, he has now instituted an intensely aggressive program which by his own admission is certain to bring prices up.  After almost a decade of promising to make his followers rich and so sick of "winning" that they will beg him to stop, his tune is now that there will have to be pain. 

This is strange, and it gets stranger when one examines the raw political dynamics at play. This raft of policies, even if they prove temporary, will fundamentally restructure the global economy. The effects will rebound to the detriment of tens of millions of Americans on all levels of the wealth scale, but will be especially punishing (at least in the short and medium term, should the tariffs remain permanent) to those with the lowest incomes. 

What will the electoral impact of these policies be? We just saw the Democrats lose an election because the price of eggs was too high. What will happen as the price of everything rises? What kind of work would an administration have to do in preparation of launching such a policy, how many months or years of careful messaging and consensus building would be necessary to avoid electoral disaster? How much of that legwork has been done in this case?

It is difficult if not impossible to make any political sense of "Liberation Day." No White House which set out to enact this set of policies in this way could possibly expect that they would be sustainable at the polls. Nor does Trump's status as a "lame duck" explain away the dissonance. The execution of "Liberation Day" is virtually guaranteed to arouse such ire in voters that the policies themselves will be eradicated and reversed at the ballot box. 

If we can't make political sense of Liberation Day (and we can't), then we must search for its logic outside of politics, or at least outside of the purview of politics-as-usual. One place where all this might make sense is in Trump's own imagination. He gives every appearance of being impulsive and driven by ego. He might not care what the specific impact of this policy will be, except that it will affect millions and be remembered. 

Another possibility is jarring but simple: Trump has pushed ahead with this policy without any regard for its disastrous electoral consequences because he does not believe it will ever be tested at the ballot box. If the electoral system broke down or were suspended, Trump and his supporters would not have to worry about paying a political price for driving up the cost of living and causing the American economy to contract. Indeed, if one's goal was to end democratic elections, the new tariff regime might be just what the doctor ordered. The economic and social chaos it is likely to cause would foster conditions in which the POTUS would have a pretext for declaring martial law. 

 It is important to note that these two scenarios are not mutually exclusive. Trump may have been driven to this folly purely by a fantasy of power, but as the political blowback becomes clear, he might feel forced to neuter our democratic institutions as an act of self-preservation. There are many enablers around him who will urge him to antidemocratic expediencies to "save the nation" and rescue the project of "making America great again," and virtually no one who will hold him accountable to his oath of office, least of all himself.

 Whatever its underlying motives or the power dynamic that conditions the evolving shape of the tariff regime, Democrats would be well advised to refrain from engaging Trump and his minions in debate on MAGA's own terms. The MAGA crowd would love to debate the wisdom of using tariffs to do any one of three or four things that they claim this policy was designed to accomplish, but that is, to quote our last president, "malarkey." No policy that is going to cause this much pain should ever have been imposed so unilaterally, so rashly, and with so little attempt to raise public support or build consensus. Undertaking this gambit with so little forethought, effort, or political preparation is impeachable malpractice, and is patently indefensible. 

Reading the Signal

 The news broken yesterday by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of  The Atlantic, that he had received top secret war plans and intelligence operations information when he had been included in a text chain in the "chat room" of Signal, a commercial social networking app, adds new mystery to a climate of growing confusion in American politics. The text chain was passing between the top national security officials of the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, along with fourteen others. Goldberg was added to the text chain just in time to see Pete Hegseth announce the imminent bombing of Houthi positions in Yemen by US naval jets. 

 

This is the most serious breach of national security since the leaks by Edward Snowden twelve years ago. If we had a real president, she would insist that the Secretary of Defense resign immediately, and would order an investigation into the culpability of the other security officials on the text chain, to see if other resignations were warranted. The response of the Trump administration and its allies in the GOP has been Orwellian in its divorce from any semblance of rationality. Hegseth's one comment has been to insult Goldberg, who can only be blamed for being a good citizen and reporting the security breach without compromising any state secrets.   

 

The total contempt that Trump officials are showing for their oaths of office and any basic sense of official responsibility is in equal measure bewildering and disgusting. If this transgression can pass without consequence or accountability, what constraints can exist for the behavior of Trump officials at all? In conversations with conservative friends I have had to endure eye rolling and condescension at the suggestion that this administration could come to resemble that of Nazi Germany should certain conditions come to pass. Presumably the disbelief expressed by those friends is rooted in the sense that Trump and his cabinet have some minimal scruples that would preclude them behaving like Nazis. But if someone in a position of responsibility as austere as that of Pete Hegseth feels comfortable spouting absurd nonsense in response to a critically perilous breach of the public trust, one can only conclude that he values nothing above his own power and ambition. Would acting like a Nazi be beyond such a person? Would you want to bet your life on it?

 

 

An Open Letter to Senator Corey Booker (D, NJ), Senator Andy Kim (D, NJ), and Representative Chris Smith (R, NJ 04)

 

Dear Senator Booker, Senator Kim, and Representative Smith,

 

         I write to you as your constituent to express my outrage at the foreign policy being pursued by the Trump administration. To call recent statements by the President “beneath the dignity of his office” would be a ludicrous understatement. The pronouncements of the President regarding American foreign policy and the actions of his officials on the global stage have been obscene. It is frankly difficult to find language strong enough in which the malfeasance of this administration can be condemned. Many dimensions of this catastrophe could be enumerated, but for brevity’s sake I will focus on two: the President’s plans regarding Gaza and his pronouncements pertaining to the conflict in the Ukraine.

         President Trump’s professed desire to remove the Palestinian residents of Gaza amounts to nothing less than a blueprint for a war crime. Punishing 1.8 million Gazans, half of whom are below the age of 18, for the depraved actions undertaken by a group of about 40,000 Hamas fighters, is an exercise in collective guilt to rival that of any authoritarian regime in history. It is the logical and moral equivalent of forcibly moving all of the residents of Los Angeles to Montana to punish the handful of criminals that engaged in arson.

        This ethical derangement would be bad enough on its own, but it lands in the middle of a torturously complex political conflict that requires sober and strategic leadership to resolve. Peace between Israelis and Palestinians will be almost impossible to achieve even if US leaders act with penetrating insight, deep knowledge, and complete fairness. With the US President spouting absurdly bigoted fantasies, the distant prospects of peace will recede even further, exacerbating the destructive violence of the conflict and extending and deepening the terrible suffering already being experienced by Palestinians and Israelis. The words and actions of the President on this issue are beyond foolish, they are gratuitously cruel.

                If the President’s involvement in Gaza must be described as gratuitously cruel, his engagement with the Ukraine conflict can only be characterized as lunatic malice. In 2022 Vladimir Putin, without any provocation or just cause, invaded the peaceful, sovereign, and democratic nation of the Ukraine. Since then his soldiers have murdered, raped, kidnapped children, and wantonly destroyed the homes and infrastructure belonging to the Ukrainian people. In response, President Trump blames the Ukrainian people for the crimes that have been committed against them. The President’s lies are simply too disgusting to be borne. They are a disgrace not merely to his office, but to the American people as a whole. We owe the world an apology for foisting upon the community of nations this ugly, vicious troll.

            You gentleman are the voice of your constituents here in New Jersey. You must condemn these actions and words of the President in the strongest possible terms, and continue to condemn his malpractice unless and until he recants his obscene offenses and makes amends for his breaches of common decency. Representative Smith, as a member of the President’s own party you especially have a responsibility to hold him accountable to basic standards of right. All of your good work advocating for civil rights in China will be rendered meaningless if you do not speak up now to preserve the credibility of the United States and the integrity of the values its leaders have championed for more than a century on the global stage.

                Though Representative Smith falls under a special onus of remonstrance, you three gentleman all must cooperate in bringing this message to the President and to the American people as a whole. You must band together with your colleagues in the House and Senate of both parties to decry the President’s atrocious words and behavior. If nothing can be done to restrain the President’s misconduct, the pain he causes will deepen and spread, and even the “two beautiful oceans” he is so fond of invoking will not protect citizens here in the US from the disastrous effects of his transgressions.

 

                         Sincerely,

 

                          Andrew Meyer