America should be less involved in the Middle East
We need to let friendly countries in the area sort out their own problems.
We typically run a Mailbag post on Fridays with answers to questions from our paid subscribers. And that’s still coming — it’ll be in your inboxes tomorrow morning. But today I wanted to break from our normal schedule to talk about the war in Iran.
I wrote Tuesday’s piece on antisemitism before I knew that air strikes on Iran were coming, but these topics are clearly related in some respects.
On the one hand, the United States and Israel teaming up to go to war is obvious catnip for people who hate Jews. But we also had both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and House Speaker Mike Johnson make public statements to the effect that Israel was going to start bombing no matter what the United States did and that would expose the United States to retaliation, so we decided we might as well join in from the start.
That’s not antisemites positing a conspiracy theory; it’s leading Republicans explaining that the United States got dragged into war by the actions of a country that is ostensibly our client state. But Trump says this isn’t true, and there was an article back on February 25 by Dasha Burns and Nahal Toosi quoting unnamed White House officials as saying that the easiest way to sell the American public on war with Iran would be to let Israel strike alone, hope Iranian retaliation hurt American troops, and then have that be the reason we joined in the war.
The truth is, the Trump administration lies a lot and does not seem particularly invested in rigorous thinking or a careful policymaking process, so we’ll probably never know exactly how this decision came to be.
What I do know is that looking at American debates about Iran policy over the last 15 years, the views of other countries in the region — not just Israel but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and so forth — have always been a major factor.
And my fundamental objection to the Iran hawks’ view of the world is that they are much too eager to collapse the distinction between America’s interests and the interests of these other countries. When you do that, the debate quickly polarizes, because if you try to put any meaningful separation between the United States and Israel, you face pressure to adopt the Palestinian nationalist worldview and start committing yourself to arms embargoes or B.D.S.
I believe that the correct view is that this region of the world is very far from the United States and our concrete interests there are limited.
It’s good to be on friendly terms with some of the countries in that region, and it’s fine that sometimes that includes arms sales, even though there are discreditable aspects of all of our friends’ domestic political arrangements.
What we do not need to be doing is directly subsidizing or, as is the case today, literally fighting regional battles with Iran on their behalf.
The United States is a global power with global interests, and we shouldn’t go whole hog isolationist or be indifferent to what happens on other continents. But we just do not need to be involved on this level.
I hope that this war somehow works out amazingly and Iran ends up with a much better government and everyone lives happily ever after. But there are dozens of reasons to doubt that will happen, lots of downside risk either way, and simply no need for the United States to be at war right now.
Don’t forget the J.C.P.O.A. debate
Lurking in the background of all of this is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (J.C.P.O.A.) that the Obama administration and its European allies reached with Iran.
The goal of J.C.P.O.A., from the American perspective, was to secure our core interest in nuclear non-proliferation. The goal of J.C.P.O.A., from the Iranian perspective, was to secure sanctions relief and have a stronger economy. A joint goal was to avoid war.
J.C.P.O.A. opponents made two major counterarguments, one of which was simply false and the other of which is worth taking seriously.
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