While I’m on the subject of global conflict, I thought I would call attention to the thoughts of the editors of the Wall Street Journal on the riots going on in Iran:
President Trump warned Iran’s regime on Friday on Truth Social that “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” By then Iran had killed at least eight protesters. Now the death toll is at least 36, according to the Human Rights Activists in Iran group. Regime thugs are raiding hospitals to arrest the wounded.
Statements from Mr. Khamenei, his judicial chief and the Governor of Tehran suggest the regime is preparing a new crackdown. The latter gave a green light to shoot “rioters,” which is how Iran’s authorities have long painted protesters who challenge the regime.
Mr. Khamenei is testing Mr. Trump and even more so his own people. Despite food inflation over 60% in 2025, Iran said Monday that a new policy will cause prices of essential goods to increase, perhaps by between 20% and 30% in the coming weeks. The idea is to end some importers’ preferential dollar-exchange rate—which had fed arbitrage and corruption and undermined the rial—and replace it with direct consumer subsidies.
They continue by pointing to the Iranian regime’s financial problems and lament:
Today’s protests aren’t yet large enough to topple the regime, but the combination of now-undeniable failures and new American pressure raises the chances. This isn’t 2009, when Barack Obama stayed mute to appease the Ayatollah.
IMO the United States has erred with respect to Iran repeatedly over the period of the last 45 years, beginning with President Carter’s handling of the ouster of the Shah. Our compromising of our own intelligence resources there is a case in point. I have no idea how the Iranian people would react to an intervention there by President Trump and I don’t think U. S. intelligence is that much better off. That’s how badly we’ve bungled things.
As flawed as the Shah’s regime was Iran was one of the linchpins of our Middle East policy. Since his fall, that policy has been something like the final scene in the movie The Red Shoes. The ballet goes on but something essential is missing.
I am not confident that we could simultaneously manage a land intervention in Iran, “run” Venezuela, supply the Ukrainians, and enforce our sanctions against Venezuela in as muscular a fashion as we have recently. We have the military resources to it; it’s our ability to manage them concurrently that I doubt. The United States is now acting as if it still inhabits a world of discrete, sequential crises when it is actually in a world of concurrent, compounding ones.
Perhaps the Israelis have more insight into Iran. Their intelligence on the ground there seems to be better.
I remember you repeatedly criticizing Obama for not carrying out his threats in Syria/Labanon over chemical weapons but I am not seeing that when Trump is making threats he cant and wont carry out. Anyway, let’s stay out of Iran.
Steve
I think you’re mistaking what I said. I don’t approve of American presidents making threats they don’t carry out. There are two ways of changing that. Either you don’t make threats or, when you do, you carry them out.