John Spencer
"Trump Ends the Folly of De-escalation," A great read by LTG (ret) McMaster. The wisdom of Trump's approach—forcing Iran to choose between continued isolation and ending its hostility to Israel, the United States, and its Arab neighbors—became apparent to many only after President Joe Biden resurrected a hapless effort to appease Iran that started during the Obama administration. The nuclear deal emboldened Iran. Just prior to Iran signing the agreement in the summer of 2015, the U.S. State Department flew pallets of euros and Swiss francs into Geneva, where trams loaded them on Iranian cargo planes headed for Tehran. That same day, Iran released four Americans who had been, in effect, hostages. The operation was reminiscent of the arms-for-hostages arrangement under the Reagan administration. The Obama administration's lie that the cash payment and the hostage release were disconnected encouraged Iran's long practice of using hostages for coercion and allowed the revolutionaries in Tehran to portray the ransom payment as an admission of American guilt and weakness. Trump's decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this month was incredibly consequential, degrading and delaying a hostile regime's path to the most destructive weapon on earth, as well as the missiles designed to deliver it. Those strikes—and Israel's campaign that preceded them—also decapitated leaders who had blood on their hands from Iran's proxy wars. But even more importantly, the Israeli and U.S. military operations directly against the Islamic Republic and its warmaking apparatus reminded officials in Tehran that they cannot antagonize their adversaries in the region with impunity—and reminded officials in Washington that Iran's theocratic dictatorship cannot be conciliated. "De-escalation" was never a path to peace—it was an approach that perpetuated war on the Iranians' terms.
The Dispatch
This week's Monday Essay features a comprehensive look at the folly of U.S. policy toward Iran over most of the past four decades. Read this week's Monday Essay by H.R. McMaster: https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-iran-deescalation-folly/