Why didn’t we do this to Iran long ago?
Those of us of a certain age remember the 1979 Iranian Revolution and of course the taking of the US hostages, which was an outrage and a humiliation. Young people don’t remember it and most probably know little to nothing about it (and perhaps couldn’t care less), but the rest of us remember. It’s not necessarily been in the forefront of our minds, but it’s been there, multiplied by other incidents in which the theocrats of Iran presided over the killings of Americans and others all over the world.
And what did the US do about it? Pretty much nothing.
If you take a look at the sidebar on my blog, you’ll see that I’ve written 387 posts under the category “Iran” (this one will make 388). That’s a lot of verbiage, and many of these posts involve the history of the 70s and 80s there. Another large number involve Obama’s infuriating Iran policy.
It seemed as though something should be done to stop them, but it never was. It’s not that we lacked the firepower, either. But we never wanted to inflame the region, nor did we want to harm the people of Iran, who periodically rose up against their leaders, only to be slaughtered. So our rage was mostly impotent. Meanwhile, our weapons became more and more sophisticated. Even the “smart” bombs of the Gulf War were surpassed over and over, as pinpoint accuracy became the norm. Some of the advances were secret, but we knew they were happening although we didn’t know the details – only rumors.
The policy on the part of Democrat presidents over the forty-seven years since 1979 has been weak, and with Obama (and Biden) it even turned against Israel, at least somewhat, and towards Iran. Both Bush II and Trump in his first administration had a “let Israel take care of it” mindset. With Trump’s second administration, that has ended.
Trump is basically Jacksonian in foreign policy:
Although Jacksonians share a domestic focus, they have been behind some of the most assertive American foreign policies in history. They are populists who believe in democracy emerging from the people and display a belligerent nationalism, quick to defend American honour and interests. Jacksonians support strong defence spending and are focused on American victory rather than global salvation.
Jacksonians don’t like to intervene militarily in foreign countries. But not only will they do it when sorely pressed, but when they decide on a military attack they don’t do it halfheartedly. They unleash a “terrible swift sword” and also try to spare American lives. But they have no trouble moving boldly and decisively.
And at this point, Trump doesn’t mind a little “global salvation” either.
It took Trump to move this way against Iran, and it helped very much that Netanyahu is the head of Israel at present. There has never been such a coordinated US/Israel military action, and that started last summer with the first wave of bombings of nuclear facilities. Trump is unafraid of doing things that previous presidents thought either impossible or unwise or both, such as moving the embassy to Jerusalem or killing Soleimani. The repercussions from Iran were thought to be too high, but it turned out they weren’t high at all.
This military assault on Iran has been planned, in one way or another, for a long time. And by “a long time” I mean more than fifteen years. I saw a recent interview with Petraeus in which he said there was a similar plan already developed back when he was in charge in the Middle East in 2009. Although the weaponry was of course not as sophisticated as it is now, the general plan was there. But it was never used.
Until now.
Whatever ends up happening in Iran and whether the people of Iran can manage the difficult task of forming a viable state that no longer threatens its neighbors, it took Trump (in tandem with Netanyahu) to lance this long-festering boil. The Iranian refugees around the world are thanking them, especially Trump:
[NOTE: In other news, there was a report that the mullahs got bombed while trying to elect a new leader. However, I think it was probably just the building:
Following the attack, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency claimed that the building was an old structure that was no longer used by the assembly for its meetings.
It remains unclear how many members of the assembly, if any, were inside the building and casting a ballot when the building was hit.
And now it’s been announced that a new leader has in fact been selected: Khameini’s son.]
[ADDENDUM: Why is Europe so afraid to stand up to Iran? Short answer: they’re afraid of their own large Muslim populations causing internal trouble. I also think they don’t want to stand up to anyone except Israel and the US.]
There are reports that he was selected by the IRGC, not by the Assembly. No real difference. I wonder what his odds are on PolyMarket?
As it happens, Will Cain just interviewed Gen. Jack Keane (Ret), a frequent Fox military analyst, who gave a dispiriting rundown on how often Iran has attacked us and killed our people with virtually no US response.
–Fox, “Jack Keane: This is on a pathway to COLLAPSE”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFxvlYQ165I
Not to mention the dishonest and disastrous kowtowing Obama lavished on the mullah regime, which is more than half the reason we are at today’s juncture.
No wonder the mullahs thought they could keep pushing the US government around!
There was also a satisfying moment when Cain played the “Respectfully…blah, blah, blah” game and Keane cut him off. “Do not patronize me. Just ask the question.”
I listen to Keane whenever I notice an interview. Always worthwhile. Always a straight shooter.
Why didn’t we act sooner?
Well, Obama wanted to establish Iran as a regional power to “balance” things in the Middle East, that is, an opponent to Israel. Barack hates Jews because he is a minority.
I saw it expressed elsewhere: the Foreign Policy Establishment would rather have Iran possess the ability to send a nuke to DC, Miami or NYC than protect America.
According to Steve Witkoff, the Iranians had enough material to construct 11 nukes. They already have some short range missiles. They could take out Jerusalem or Riyadh. And what about a dirty bomb in the US?
And the Iranian sect of Islam likes this end of the world stuff.
President Trump is a man of action who protects this country. That can’t be said about the Dems.
Cornhead prediction. Within one year, it will be clear that this successful attack was one of the greatest events in world history. The mullahs and IRGC will be out and peace in the Middle East will finally be achieved.
Jack Keane is a graduate of Fordham University; Jesuit school.
I would also say that there was the time factor. The Israelis and we apparently spent decades deeply dialed in to the Iranian system studying them day after day. There is no way the in depth knowledge to do this could be put together in a day. It took time to gather intel, make plans, adjust them, and mature the tech. Perhaps we could ultimately have gotten similar effects in 1979 but it would have been a lot tougher.
But there’s also the other side.
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/03/03/this-detail-about-the-negotiations-with-iran-changes-everything-n4950179
Witkoff is now claiming the Iranians came into the negotiating room claiming they had enough uranium to enrich 11 bombs, boasting about how they had evaded the IAEA, and refusing a generous deal for civilian grade uranium. I honestly do not trust or like Witkoff much but I do so far more than the Mullahs, and if he is saying this publicly I assume he has the “receipts” that would stand up even to Congress. That I think indicates another time factor: that this happened because we had let the Mullahcracy threat slide so long that they were close to their goals and the window for action was closing. That too took time.
Well, Obama wanted to establish Iran as a regional power to “balance” things in the Middle East, that is, an opponent to Israel.
This passed as “intellectual and sophisticated” among democrats.
Not sure President Trump’s first term was all under his control.
Europe does seem to have their Marxists siding up to the Muslims invasion and letting the invaders do whatever they want.
Why didn’t we do this to Iran long ago? Fear of igniting a scorched earth Holy War. Consequently we tried to manage the problem much as the Founders sought to do with the Barbary Pirates two centuries ago by negotiation and tribute.
‘In March 1786, Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy, ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). When they enquired “concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury”, the ambassador replied:
“It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.[23]’
Jefferson reported the conversation to Secretary of Foreign Affairs John Jay, who submitted the ambassador’s comments and offer to Congress. The incident convinced Jefferson that paying further tribute would do nothing to prevent more attacks.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
It took a man who would soon be President then to recognize further negotiation with fanatics was useless just as it took a President now to reach much the same conclusion. Any of the last Presidents over the last 47 yrs could have acted. They just had to have the will to act as Jefferson and Trump did.
The repercussions from Iran were thought to be too high, but it turned out they weren’t high at all.
I hope so, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Meanwhile, our weapons became more and more sophisticated.
The Venezuela military action was rather “beyond belief.” A much lesser threat, of course. In the current instance, we have apparently lost a few fighter jets or light bombers. So the Iranian defense is not completely toothless. Still, the whole thing seems fairly incredible for us so far. Good, I hope.
As I said earlier in Open Thread:
__________________________
So the rumors of that big Iranian cache of enriched uranium were true.
That means that once the Iranians got some centrifuges spinning again — maybe they already have — they were on their way to putting a bomb onto a ballistic missile which could threaten Israel.
So this was the mullahs’ ace in the hole. Why they were willing to risk the all-out attack they are experiencing now.
Why they won’t let go until every link in the chain to a nuclear weapon is broken, all those mullahs are dead and the Islamic Republic is dumped onto the ash heap of history.
__________________________
Bar-bar-bar Bar-Barbara Ann!
The more I learn about the beliefs of Iran’s governing theocracy the more I wonder why we didn’t do something earlier. I know there are reasons but it seems like a much more pertinent question than why did Trump decide to act now.
I’m still concerned about everything that can go wrong with this operation and I’m not that optimistic about Iran’s short term future, but I have no doubt that these strikes were justifiable. There is now the possibility at least that we might see relative peace in Middle East for the first time in my life. It is truly disturbing that for the Left and the Jew-hating right the prospects of this operation succeeding are far more frightening than of their failure.
TommyJay:
The idea that the repercussions weren’t high refers to the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem and the killing of Soleimani, not the present attacks.
The three F-15s that were shot down were reportedly “own goals,” friendly fire by our SAM hardware over Kuwait.
Iran would certainly liked to have done it. But give Murphy, not the mullahs, credit when it is his doing.
P.S. I’m with Turtler when Witchoft is involved.
Huxley is correct.
”The three F-15s that were shot down were reportedly ‘own goals,’ friendly fire by our SAM hardware over Kuwait.”
This has gotten even more bizarre. It now appears that all three Eagles were shot down by a single Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet.
In the 54-year history of the F-15, no one has ever shot one down in air-to-air combat. Its record was previously 102-0. Now it’s 102-3. Three Eagles taken out by a single Hornet. Wow! I didn’t have that on my bingo card.
I don’t know how to take it. (I have parts flying on both aircraft types.)
“Barack hates Jews because he is a minority,” avers Cornhead.
Please allow me this correction as more fully accurate in defining Barack:
“Barack hates Jews because he is a Leftist NeoMarxist minority, who was intellectually groomed with the hatred of a card carrying CPUSA member, the black poet and Commie propagandist Frank Marshall Davis.” This occurred in his teen years in Hawaii.
mkent:
Thank you for the correction. Is IFF not a thing? Or Murphy wins again?
F/A-18 – Location, location, location takes a new meaning? Fortunately no fatalities.
Don’t think that those American pilots were expecting to be fired upon by an allied aircraft (unless that should be “allied” aircraft).
Well, mistakes are made… (or are they?—Well, let’s indeed HOPE they are this case…)
Re: Iranian enriched uranium
Here’s Kudlow interviewing Gen. Jack Keane (Ret) for the latest on Iran.
–Fox Busines, “Gen. Jack Keane: US and Israel are systematically shredding the Iranian regime”
https://youtu.be/pooOhfD-vyo?t=418
Kudlow asks Keane directly about the Iranian claim of enough 60% enriched uranium for 11 bombs.
Keane doubts the uranium exists or if it does, it is buried at the bottom of those sites we bombed last June. He notes that the Iranians are always “full of bluster.”
In any event Keane emphasizes that the US and Israel have comprehensive plans to locate and destroy all locations, equipment, materials and people involved in the nuclear weapons process. He is certain those plans will be successful.
This essay is very much worth reading:
The Iran Question is All About China
https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/the-iran-question-is-all-about-china?r=1ifx2i&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
Short answer to the initial question:
Balls.
@huxley:Keane doubts the uranium exists or if it does, it is buried at the bottom of those sites we bombed last June. He notes that the Iranians are always “full of bluster.”
If the world’s bad actors should have learned anything since 2001, it’s “brag about your nuclear program and threaten your enemies with lakes of fire AFTER you have the bombs and not before”.
I don’t think there’s any indication that BO ‘hates Jews’ or has many peculiar or original perspectives on world affairs. To me, he seems in his attitudes and his character and personality like a standard-issue higher ed apparatchik (student affairs division), bar his affection for luxury accommodations and palling around with celebrities. You can detect certain shticks (his green energy and Iran fixations) which you might attribute to him being a man of a certain vintage. And his affection for the 1st person singular is ever amusing.
==
Please note that BO dealt with Benjamin Netanyahu for about 90% of his time in office.
==
Some time back, I saw a split screen image. Both were black and white pictures, one of BO and one of BN taken while each was around 20. BO is in a wicker chair and wearing a Panama hat. The caption is ‘smokes choom’. BN is in fatigues and carrying a gun. The caption is ‘smokes terrorists’. BO doesn’t stand up in comparison to BN, and they both know it. They have very different ideas of what motivates human behavior and BN was unimpressed with and disinclined to play along with the various schemes which pop into the head of characters like BO, John Kerry, Anthony Blinken, and Ben Rhodes.
This is why I get frustrated when some conservatives say “if Iran has always been at war with us, why did nobody bring up attacking Iran before?” But that’s nonsense. It’s not that it has never been brought up. Plenty of conservatives have wanted to take a harder line against Iran for decades. It’s very disingenuous to claim that this is just the latest psy-op.
I would chalk it up to a variety of things that make now the perfect time.
TL/DR version: we have the greatest upside and the lowest risks in the present time for taking action.
In 1979, we had the feckless Jimmah as President, but also a perceived heavily competent, nuclear-armed, USSR foe backing the Islamists. OPEC wielded real power to grind US economy to a halt. Vietnam had only ended a few years earlier in a humiliating way for the US.
Reagan election got the hostages back; he focused on the Soviet threat, and having them crumble, because they were the funding patron. The benefit of that was not reaped until the 1990s. The Iranians and Iraqis also were busily fighting each other throughout the 1980s.
With the first Gulf war under GHWBush, we stupidly decided to tie ourselves to the morality of war under UN auspices. So Kuwait was the only goal, with obvious adverse consequences seen later.
Clinton was all about coasting off the peace dividend from the downfall of the USSR. Never would have had a mandate from his own party, or the people having been elected with a plurality; treated jihadism on US soil as criminal vs. military.
With Gulf II, GHB followed the same “we should go through the UN” model as Bush 41, and could not retain allies to go into Iran. My opinion is that he was never a strong strategic thinker; combine that with his family interests (ditto on Cheney) being too enmeshed in personal relationships in the mideast to actually name Islamofascist jihadism as the problem. And he cared too much about the political left, thinking they were still part of “Old America.”
During Bush I the Saudis were heavily funding Wahhabi Islam to counter the Iranians, and the Muslim Brotherhood. That dropped off precipitously with MBS in 2017 during the Trump 1 term.
During the Obama years, Obama’s foreign policy record was atrocious for obvious reasons. Yet ironically, Obama getting cozy with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt led to them taking power, and then getting tossed. el-Sisi banned them, and has kept Egypt under control for over a decade.
Libya is still a mess, but cannot project countervailing power.
US energy independence has helped considerably.
Russia showed it cannot even properly take over Ukraine.
China has shown its preference for long game institutional controls/operations and proxy attacks vs. direct warmaking.
No-one overtly supported the Palestinians as proxies after October 7, besides Iran.
Iraq is (relatively) quiet.
Turkey is (relatively) quiet.
Afghanistan is a basket case still, but needling Pakistan, not us.
Palestinians are a mess, but cannot project countervailing power.
We don’t need or care about Europe today in a way that we might have cared in the 1990s (and France/UK still had stronger ties to their former colonies vs now).
So, today, you simply do not have the same threat-projection risks by other nations that you did in the 80s/90s/early 2000s.
October 7 2023 fundamentally changed the Israeli psyche as well for what I would call the “normies.”
And, if the Iranians really did give the perfect excuse of, we have enough nuclear material to make 11 warheads, if the best time to go was in the past, the next best time to go is today; many of the Iranian people are clearly ready for it, and hopefully can make something of it.
Add in what I would call “jihadist fatigue,” and more and more evidence that not everyone wants to be Western Civ, so fine, we’ll let you be, but don’t mess with us.
— Skip
We know Trump’s first term was not under his control. This was partly his fault and partly the sheer entrenched power of the Establishment/Deep State.
— Art Deco
No doubt about most of that. It was a joke at the time that when you heard Obama speak, you were hearing the voice of the Faculty Lounge.
That said, while I don’t know if BHO is anti-semitic per se, he absolutely hates Netanyahu, and he is absolutely pro-Iranian. We don’t have to speculate, we could see his policies unfold in real time.
Former Legislator gives a good summation of our recent decades. I would add a few points.
The Vietnam period revealed a truth that has haunted America ever since: that our educated/intellectual class hates their own country and their own civilization (and sometimes I think they privately hate themselves and project it), and the elite governing class they trained has been trained to do the same.
It haunted us dealing with Iran in the 1970s, it haunted Reagan in the 1980s as he tried to deal with the Soviet threat, it haunted us in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s a constant. This group was far more powerful and influential back then than it is now. (I think their real power/influence peaked under late Bush II/early Obama.)
As Former Legislator noted, the USSR was a real and present danger in those days, and avoiding nuclear escalation was a reality that could not be ignored.
Carter himself was a strange mix of sagacity and naivete. At heart, he was sort of like Woodrow Wilson, he thought that the world could be fixed by logic and argument. He was of course wrong. I have heard reports that he was so averse to using force that during the planning for the abortive hostage rescue mission, he asked if the men could be armed with non-lethal weapons. I can’t swear to the truth of that story, but I heard it from a lefty.
That failed resuce mission is another reason for nothing being done. The American military was in disastrous shape in the 1970s. It wasn’t until well into the Reagan years that the damage was restored, and the intellectual class was fighting Reagan every step of the way as he did it.
Also, the mullahs were far more popular at home in the 1970s and 1980s than they are now. Remember, the Islamic Republic came to power on the back of a wave of popular religious enthusiasm. It took a long time for the reality of their venality, oppressiveness, and incompetence to erode that enthusiasm away.
Sometimes something can be possible at one point and not possible at another, because of changing conditions.
Not just Dems.
It’s been an article of faith among a big swath of the GOPe foreign policy establishment, for many years, that if we just let them take out Israel, the Middle East would calm down. James Baker was a big believer in that one.
Our ‘educated elites’ are a disaster area, and have been for decades.