Victor Davis Hanson, What the Situation on the Ground in Iran Actually Looks Like
Brian T. Kennedy, A Defense of the President’s Strategy in Iran
The Iranian regime’s strategy today is simple. Fight a war of attrition against the United States. Maintain strategic, military, and economic relationships with Communist China and Russia to keep the economy afloat and the arsenal of drones and missiles replenished. And wait for the day when President Trump is out of office, trusting that his successor will lack his resolve. The mullahs believe time is on their side. Every American president before President Trump taught them to believe it.
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To avoid a forever war, we need to understand a truth that our political class resists: as long as the Islamic Republic stands, it is a permanent enemy of the United States.
What we face is not a forever war, but a permanent problem—the perpetual ambition of the mullahs to build nuclear weapons—with which we must deal. If regime change is not possible, however desirable it may be, then the next best option is a military strategy that continuously destroys Iran’s nuclear capabilities as they appear, for as long as they appear, until American missile defenses are fully operational.
This is not the endless nation-building of Iraq and Afghanistan. It requires no occupation, no democracy promotion, no American garrisons rebuilding Iranian society. It is the periodic and decisive application of American power in defense of the American homeland—nothing more, and nothing less.