Hawks and Doves Got Iran Wrong
The war turns out to be both harder and more necessary than Americans expected.
By Walter Russell Mead
As the latest Gulf war intensifies and its economic consequences grow, two things seem clear.
First, many Iran doves seriously underestimated the risks and costs of attempting to coexist with the regime.
Second, many Iran hawks seriously underestimated the risks and costs of opposing Tehran’s drive for regional hegemony through military action.
The result is a war that is more necessary than doves thought and harder to wage than hawks supposed.
Iran doves in past U.S. administrations hoped that a mix of conciliation and deterrence would allow America to coexist with Iran.
Those hopes reflected confidence that Iran’s sophisticated civil society would ultimately either overthrow the Islamic Republic or drive its evolution in a more moderate direction.
They also reflected legitimate concern about the costs and risks of military conflict with a country almost four times the size of Iraq and close to double Iraq’s population.
Under the circumstances, kicking the can down the road in the hopes that something might turn up looked to a lot of smart people like the best of bad options.
There were additional dovish arguments in the policy debate.
On the right, many believed that America’s energy independence meant that the U.S. no longer had vital interests in the Gulf.
On the left and far right, rising and radicalizing anti-Israel sentiment sought to end America’s alignment with the Jewish state.
Iran hawks united around two ideas.
The first was that the commitment of Tehran’s rulers to dominate the Gulf made long-term coexistence between Washington and the mullahs impossible.
The Iranian regime was committed to a revolutionary religious vision and determined on economic and geopolitical grounds to seize control of the Gulf region to become a world power.
Tehran was hell-bent on developing military capabilities and networks that, at some point, would pose unacceptable threats to free navigation of the Gulf—and of global access to its fossil fuels and other commodities.
The hawks’ second point was that the security of the Gulf remains a vital American interest.
We may not need its oil and gas ourselves, but between the consequences to the American economy and financial markets of an interruption in supply to key economic partners and allies and the importance of certain non-oil imports from the region (like fertilizer), the U.S. needs to keep the Gulf open.
Currently, Iran’s ability, at least temporarily, to close the Gulf and inflict major damage on its neighbors, even after airstrikes from Israel and the U.S., underscores the unacceptable danger that Iran’s military power poses to the region.
At the same time, the massive economic result of the closing highlights the reality that American interests remain inextricably bound up in freedom of navigation (and security of production) in and around the Gulf.
So here we are.
Despite military successes by air and sea, Israel and the U.S. have so far been unable to keep the Gulf open or to protect the Gulf states from Iranian attacks.
Domestically, Democrats are mostly locked into opposing a war that many doves think the president could and should have avoided.
A conviction among many grassroots Democrats that Donald Trump poses a greater threat to America than the surviving members of the Iranian mullahcracy strengthens that opposition.
It also raises the costs for Democratic politicians seeking to rally around the flag against Iran.
Internationally, allied recognition that American forces are defending a vital waterway on which their economies depend struggles with public distaste for the American president and doubts about his will and ability to win.
Mr. Trump has weathered many crises.
The Iran war is the greatest—and gravest—challenge he has faced.
Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush could all tell him how difficult war leadership can be in a divided America.
As the U.S. moved toward entering World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to unite the country.
In 1940 he named Frank Knox, the 1936 Republican nominee for vice president, as secretary of the Navy. Henry Stimson, a veteran of the Taft and Hoover administrations, became war secretary.
As the war grew more brutal and costly in 1943, FDR told the country that “Dr. New Deal” would have to step back to make room for “Dr. Win-the-War.”
Mr. Trump launched what he expected to be a short war.
One hopes that optimism proves justified, but if the war continues for more than a few additional weeks, he will need to build broader support abroad and at home to carry it through—while keeping his MAGA base united behind him.
That’s a tough assignment, but nobody ever said being president of the U.S. was an easy job.
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