APRES KHAMENEI: THE TOUGHEST TEST

REGIME CHANGE ?

One morning twenty three years ago, with America on the verge of war in the Middle East, I went to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, chaired by the estimable Richard Lugar.

Two top Administration officials, the State Department’s Marc Grossman and Douglas Feith of the Pentagon, testified the Bush Administration had carefully prepared for war in Iraq, expected to be welcomed as liberators when the brutal Saddam Hussein regime was toppled and weapons of mass destruction destroyed. The country then could be rebuilt in two years.

Those claims were devastated by the next panel with Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. Central Command. They didn’t doubt the likely effectiveness of the initial attacks, but the planners grossly underestimated the perils and challenges of the aftermath, and a two year rebuilding was a fantasy. To those who argued anything was better than Saddam, Zinni reminded that we helped drive the old Soviet Union out of Afghanistan only to be replaced by the militant Taliban who provided sanctuary for the plotters of the 9/11 attack on America.

I wrote a column -- “The Toughest Test: Apres Saddam“ -- with a lead if the hearing had been a prize fight it would have been a TKO.

It is impossible not to see a deja vu with President Trump’s bombing strike on Iran. The similarities and differences are striking and not encouraging.

Both were massive bombing attacks that were said to be designed to head off existential threats. President Bush declared Iraq had advanced weapons of mass destruction, a global threat. This weekend President Trump claimed Iran was close to possessing a nuclear bomb which threatens allies and America.

In both cases the initial attacks were highly successful. In Iraq, Saddam and his henchmen were driven to hiding; Iran’s Supreme leader and top officials were wiped out by the American and Israeli bombings.

Both Administrations called for a popular uprising.

Of course the Bush WMD claims proved false and the Trump charges about an imminent nuclear weapon threat likewise is untrue. The differences are even more pronounced.

Bush prepared the nation for war, emphasizing it in his State of the Union address that year, dispatching top officials including sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations. As required, he won bipartisan congressional approval for the military action.
Trump ignored Congress, but got the encouragement and ok from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The President gave short shrift to Iran in an historically long State of the Union speech. He reportedly became displeased with the ongoing talks with the Iranians by his novice negotiators, real estate mogul Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law.

The countries are dramatically different in size. Iran has almost four times the population and geographically is three and a half times larger. Even with the dismantling Iran has more military and terrorist capacities than Iraq had.

This is a war of choice. Years ago Richard Haass wrote a good book on the differences between wars of necessity and choice. The first Gulf War in 1991 to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait was a war of necessity and successful. Every recent war of choice -- from Vietnam to the 2003 Iraq invasion, Afghanistan and Libya -- has failed. Regime change doesn’t occur through bombing; it takes ground forces which Trump says he has ruled out.

Which raises the question why did Trump choose to start this war? Going back to his first presidential campaign, he has criticized American interventions and “endless wars.” I’ve always thought rather than a deeply held view this was situational opportunism as usually is the case with Trump.

Also after his first strike against Iran last year and then forcing governing change in Venezuela, Trump’s chutzpah escalated; hey this stuff may not be that hard.

There’s the Wag the Dog explanation. That was a 1997 movie where a President staged a war to get a sex scandal off the front pages.

I don’t have any top Administration sources on this and probably wouldn’t believe them if I did. My two best sources are the David’s -- Ignatius of the Washington Post and the New York Times’ Sanger -- two terrific reporters. Their analysis doesn’t make me feel better.

Nobody knows how this will play out. What Trump cares most about is his political standing and minimizing American casualties; if Iran is in chaos it won’t much bother him.

Many years ago when my alma mater, the Wall Street Journal, was expanding its international coverage a young staffer reportedly asked, “Is our style Iran or Iraq?”

Maybe that reporter was more prescient than we realized.