Exactly 23 years ago, I was a Marine headed to the Persian Gulf aboard the same ships now taking towards Iran today. Many of us had questions about President Bushs intentions with Iraq, but asking them was not our job. Congress had voted and we had a clear task in front of us.
Today, as a member of the branch of government charged with declaring war, those questions are my job. And after President Trumps address on Wednesday, the American people have more questions than answers.
Instead of laying out a clear strategy to end or reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump offered vague promises of escalation and even veiled threats of war crimes against the Iranian people. Financial markets took a nosedive in real time during his speech, mirroring the same uncertainty and fear that our service members and their families are feeling right now.
Weve heard a lot of stated objectives from the Trump administration that seem to shift by the day, from regime change, to ballistic missile “obliteration,” to seizing their oil. Last night it was stopping Iran from projecting power and building a nuclear bomb. Leaving aside that Iran has been projecting power much more violently and effectively since Trump started this war, and he supposedly “obliterated” their nuclear program just last summer, none of the options involving ground troops will help end it.
If Trump is serious about the he outlined on Wednesday night, these are the options he appears to be considering.
The first option is seizing Kharg Island. Its Irans economic center of gravity, but to correct a common misunderstanding, it is not in the Strait of Hormuz. Trumps logic seems to be that if you make this war extremely costly from an economic perspective, Iran will cave.
There are two problems with that logic. One, it makes zero sense that Trump is willing to lift sanctions on Iranian oil in an attempt to lower skyrocketing gas prices in the US, but would also be willing to take Iranian oil off the global market entirely by seizing Kharg Island. Two, a hardline theocratic regime is not particularly vulnerable to economic pressure.
His second plan is a risky special operations mission to secure the uranium from the bombed-out vaults in the mountains. The chances such a complex operation goes completely right are small, and even if it succeeds, we would be incredibly naive to think Iran wont simply enrich more uranium down the line. It also wouldnt help open the Strait, and its unnecessary: Obama accomplished this with a .
The third plan is forcibly reopening the Strait of Hormuz by occupying the Iranian coast. Such an amphibious assault would require tens or hundreds of thousands of American troops, result in thousands of American casualties, and wouldnt have a military endgame besides sitting there forever.
Every option runs into the same problem: The regime would still be intact. We removed one older hardline leader and replaced him with a younger one who is even more radical, which leaves us with only one military path: degrading Irans capabilities, then leaving and watching them reconstitute and rearm.
The for a tells you what they think each round will cost. Thats an expensive habit, costing the average taxpayer about $1,300, and costing the families of the troops we lose every time unimaginably more. Are you ready to spend $1,300 on Iran every few years?
That is why the only path that can actually end this war is a negotiated agreement. This is the path President Obama set us on with his nuclear deal. It was imperfect, but it removed the threat of a nuclear Iran, backed up by inspections and constant electronic monitoring. Trump lied when he told the American people Iran wasnt abiding by it; his own first Administration certified Iran was following it. And its telling that most of the nuclear proposals hes now making were already contained in Obamas deal.
Unfortunately, Trump has now made getting back to th
