MAGA's Massive Ordnance Penetrator
Donald Trump's coalition and contradictory worldview faces the Iranian moment as Congress ducks its responsibility. What would a reasonable president do?
First things first: To my family and friends in Israel, what I wish for you right now is an undisturbed night of restful sleep. Maybe reading my meandering thoughts will help you nod off?
The crisis of American liberal democracy is now meeting the crisis of the Middle East frontally. One impulsive egomaniac surrounded by a coterie of incompetent advisors is about to make the most consequential decisions about war and peace — with input from the Congress, the Article I branch with the authority to declare war, barely counting as an afterthought. Here are some thoughts on where this puts us:
The politics of contradiction
I’m tired of personality studies of Donald Trump, but it’s fascinating to think through the competing pressures this situation puts on his coalition and the contradictions it exposes in the ideology forming around him. Think of Donald Trump’s personality and erratic behavior as a half-mile of cement — an inscrutable layer covering a highly combustible mix of populist isolationism, messianic Christianity, traditional hawkishness, and authoritarian impulses. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator whose use he is contemplating also threatens to break through that political cover and reveal the tensions lying beneath it.
a. Russia v. Iran. Trump admires Putin but loathes the Iranian revolutionary regime. (Perhaps it is because he recognizes in Putin the kind of amoral kleptocracy he is most comfortable with, while the ideological edge the rotten Iranian system still shows the outside world is off-putting.) In any case, we may now be in the odd situation where the United States is boosting one element of the global authoritarian alliance in Russia while bombing another in Iran. Rather than seeing Ukraine and Israel as both waging the same global fight for liberal democracy, Trumpism asks how they relate to the global left-of-center elite. Ukraine is rendered suspect by support from Europe and the American left. Israel is rendered sympathetic by the hostility it encounters from both quarters.
b. Isolationists v. hawks. Most notably, it is pitting the new right-wing isolationist movement that has rallied to his standard over the last decade against the Republican Party’s older hawks and evangelicals. How that fight shakes out will probably hinge not on principles, but on results. If the U.S. gets embroiled in a complicated and costly conflict, the isolationists will feel vindicated. If American intervention is limited to dropping The Big One and Iranian blowback is contained, Trump and the hawks will claim to be war-enders, not war-starters. If there’s a negotiated solution, everyone can claim victory. But this could be the moment in which the media personalities driving MAGA passions start to look past the era of Trump — to convert a personality cult into a movement dedicated to isolationism and illiberalism.
c. Israeli success v. Gulf State seductions. Trump’s attachment to Israel (if not to Benjamin Netanyahu) and his obvious desire to get in on what seems to be a winning battle on the one hand, and his corrupt ties to patrons in Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other. Saudi Arabia now seems inexplicably committed to a policy of conciliation with Iran, while Qatar has always played a double game between Iran and the West and would likely prefer to see the balance of power remain more or less as it is to maximize its own leverage.
The broken politics of war
The utter failure of the U.S. Congress to assert war-making powers are nothing new. In Vietnam, when the Congress finally soured on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that had authorized Johnson to escalate American intervention, the victory was hollow. Nixon himself sponsored the resolution’s repeal and merrily continued fighting the war under what he asserted to be his inherent constitutional powers. Bush with Iraq at least sought authorization, as did Obama with his infamous “red line” in Syria — although the purpose there was probably just to find an elegant way out.
The war and peace debate being held online at the moment rightly belongs in Congress. For members to sit aside and let a president - especially one so impulsive and ill-advised - just make the call solo is a stunning abdication. There are objections to calling in Congress at this point, of course. The correct choice may ultimately hinge on intelligence that legislators cannot access. The hour is also late and in a matter like this, the U.S. doesn’t want to tip its hand to the Iranians, open airspace notwithstanding. But the solution to these objections is to convene urgently and craft authorization accordingly. Members of Congress are not sitting this out because it's so vital to surprise Iran, but because they're scared of having the debate they were elected to conduct.
So — should America bomb Iran?
I don’t know what I don’t know. If Israel is capable of taking out Fordow on its own — and at this point, I’m not ruling out any Israeli capabilities — then it probably makes sense to minimize the American fingerprints. If not, the question becomes whether it is a vital American interest to ensure the war that Israel launched with American approval succeeds.
A nuclear Iran could probably be trusted to follow the logic of mutual assured destruction and refrain from actually using its weapons. But what if the regime falls or fractures and true believers view the destruction of Israel as their dying achievement? That strikes me as a low-probability outcome that is nevertheless so catastrophic that it must be ruled out. A nuclear strike on Israel would kill many thousands of American citizens and make the world a permanently more dangerous place.
And while most of the analysis I have read suggests that Iran seeks nuclear weapons primarily as a defensive asset, it’s also true that Iran views the “strategic depth” provided by regional proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis as an element of its “defense.” A nuclear Iran would be emboldened to rebuild these proxies — and this report from an Israeli think tank shows Iranian musing openly about invasions of Israel even after Oct. 7 and the destruction of Gaza. None of this is existential for the United States, but it certainly could be very dangerous. The U.S. has 30,000 troops generally hanging out in the Middle East, and uses bases in the region to project power far beyond. If you’re not an America First isolationist, you believe that’s a positive good to be protected; even if you think the American posture should be more restrained, it seems unrealistic to take the nation’s interests in the region to zero. If you think America should be in the business of protecting the world’s liberal democracies as vital allies — well, then that seals the deal. I suppose I’m in that last camp, but I think it’s worth offering a more realist analysis.
The risk of striking Iran is obviously that you put American troops in the region at risk and invite major disruptions to regional shipping. If you begin with the goal of preventing Iranian nuclear weapons, you might decide regime change is the only way to reliably achieve it. Then you are well on your way to a spiral of long-term warfare. But I think a disciplined approach would set the target at destroying Fordow and setting the Iranians back several years, aiming to bring them back to the table with much higher credibility that you will hit them again if you must. Given Israel’s success in clearing Iranian airspace, this seems like something the United States can do without a major entanglement.
The real wild card would be if Putin or Xi decide this is the moment to escalate in Europe or Taiwan, gambling that Trump’s would not be willing to expend more capital on foreign adventures than he already has.
I’m glad that I don’t have to make these decisions. I wish I could trust the people making them.