‘Bomb and hope’ is not a strategy

In his 1 hour, 47-minute State of the Union address, President Donald Trump spent three minutes on Iran. This is alarming because the United States seems on the verge of a war with that country, with little public discussion about it. The Trump administration has assembled the largest U.S. military force in the region since the Iraq War, deploying two carrier strike groups and at least 150 aircraft nearby. There are up to 40,000 American troops in the region. And yet the core of any successful military operation remains unclear and undefined — what is the objective?

In his State of the Union remarks, Trump seemed to suggest that the basic goal was to get the Iranians to say “those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’” But the Iranians have said this repeatedly for decades. The Islamic Republic’s supreme leader issued an apparent fatwa in 2003 against acquiring nuclear weapons, and he has reiterated it many times since. That statement is reaffirmed in the first paragraphs of the Iran nuclear deal agreed to by the Obama administration and the government of Iran. If all Trump wants is a restatement of that position, this crisis should end quickly.

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