Israel and the United States are already running victory laps after initially crushing Iran’s nuclear program with a massive bombing campaign, assassinating its military leaders and nuclear scientists, and threatening to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini. President Donald Trump has boasted, “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran” and demands are for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has voiced optimism over regime change in Iran. He told Fox News that Israel’s attack “could certainly” result in regime change, as the government in Iran is “very weak.” He argued that “80% of the people would throw these theological thugs out.”
But there is reason for caution. Mr. Netanyahu championed the United States’ invasion of Iraq. He confidently opined in 2002 to the United States Congress:
“There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons. Once Saddam has nuclear weapons, the terror network will have nuclear weapons … If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots, is gone.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s confidence proved misplaced, as were the expectations of many others. Saddam had no nuclear weapons program. Saddam was taken out without any democratic flowering either in Iraq or in the neighborhood. The Iranian regime was not only left undisturbed but transformed Iraq into an Iranian satellite and made Iran a reckless regional hegemon that we see today.
Does the Israeli Prime Minister know what victory looks like in Iran? To say Israel will continue to attack until it wins may be an earmark of cluelessness. Richard Holbrooke, while serving as the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under President Barack Obama, evasively defined victory in Afghanistan as, “We’ll know it when we see it.” Aimless wars seldom if ever succeed.
Iran sports 10 times the population of Israel. The latter can never hope to occupy Iran and force or superintend regime change or prevent a rebuilding of Iran’s nuclear capacity. North Korea would have no reluctance to share its nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles.
The importance of controlling the skies over Iran may be overestimated. In January 1972, President Richard Nixon privately disparaged the bombing campaign in Laos and Vietnam, saying, “We have had 10 years of total control of the air in Laos and V. Nam. The result = Zilch.”
What about the unpopularity of the oppressive, benighted regime of mullahs in Iran? Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin was brutally tyrannical, yet the Red Army rallied to his support to defeat the Nazi invasion in 1941.
We also have a bad track record with regime change in Iran. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s first and only democratic leader, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, to install Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, notorious for industrial-scale corruption, brutality and megalomania. There and then was born the 1979 Iranian Revolution ushering in the reign of mullahs beginning with Ayatollah Khomeini.
I flag these issues and the fog of war not in defense of Iran. It is an oppressive, theocratic, misogynistic dictatorship. But many other countries are equally evil. And North Korea possesses nuclear weapons. Experience teaches that no war should be started unless you are reasonably confident the cure is superior to the disease. We forgot that lesson in Afghanistan. We forgot that lesson in Iraq. We forgot that lesson in Libya. We forgot that lesson in Yemen.
Shouldn’t those examples be in President Trump’s rear-view mirror in deciding whether to engage with Israel in a full-scale war against Iran?
Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.