Last week, before the United States started bombing Iran, I speculated about whether we would actually drop bombs and, if so, what Iran’s reaction would be.
I must admit, I never even considered the possibility that Donald Trump’s strategy might work: Drop a bunch of bunker busters in a single bombing run; hope that Iran’s response would be insignificant; proceed from there to a ceasefire and a peace deal.
Ridiculous!
My bad.
At first glance, it appears as though Trump has pulled off a near-miracle.
Hats off to him.
Not just the Nobel Peace Prize. Make the man a saint.
Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote of James Boswell (Samuel Johnson’s biographer) that Boswell was:
Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of London … .
And Macaulay was just getting warmed up. But Macaulay concluded:
Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.
I was thinking the same about Trump: He’s a narcissist and a sociopath. He’s a felon and a rapist (as that word is commonly understood). He’s an insurrectionist and a fraud. He’s a liar and a blowhard. And he’s an asshole. But maybe the bastard really does deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s eliminated the threat of a nuclear Iran, ended the war between Iran and Israel, and brought Iran back to the negotiating table.
That annoyed me no end — he’s such a jerk! — but I briefly believed it.
Then I thought harder.
Iran can still retaliate against the United States. Iran could still counterattack against the U.S. in a way that reveals Iran’s involvement in the counterattack — for example, firing missiles directly from Iran or launching cyberattacks easily traceable to the country.
If I were Iran, I wouldn’t do that. It feels too much like national suicide.
But Iran could also attack in ways that maintain Iran’s plausible deniability. Iran could ask the Houthis to attack international shipping in the Red Sea, and Iran could deny that it had anything to do with the attacks. Or a “lone wolf” terrorist could bomb a shopping mall in the United States or a U.S. embassy overseas, and Iran could claim to be shocked — shocked! — to learn of the attack.
So maybe — maybe — Iran can still retaliate and get away with it.
But Iran is very likely to respond in another way.
Iran almost surely moved some of its enriched uranium out of the locations that the U.S. bombed. Given the number of times Trump threatened to bomb those locations, Iran would have been silly not to act. And Iran did have trucks pull up to at least one of those locations before the bombing occurred. Whether the U.S. “obliterated” the three locations or merely “severely damaged” them, Iran still possesses both enriched uranium and the know-how needed to build a nuke.
Will Iran now negotiate away its capacity to construct that weapon?
Inconceivable.
Iran knows (as I would know, if I were in Iran’s shoes) that the United States can’t be trusted. Obama negotiated a nonbinding political commitment with Iran meant to keep the peace — the Iran nuclear deal. In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from that deal. Trump was within his legal rights to withdraw from the agreement, but, if you were Iran, would you negotiate with the U.S. again in the future?
Also, a sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to take place on June 15 but was cancelled when Israel attacked Iran on June 13. Moreover, on the afternoon of June 19, the White House press secretary read a message that she said came “directly from the president.” Trump said that he would make a decision about whether to strike Iran “within the next two weeks.” Two days later, on June 21, the bombs were falling.
Like the decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, these words may have been technically accurate. But they were plainly intended to deceive Iran into thinking that attacks were not imminent. If you were Iran, would you now trust anything the United States said about its intentions?
I wouldn’t, and I’m on our side.
So, if Iran is thinking — and it surely is — it will secretly develop a bomb. Iran can’t trust the U.S. As North Korea’s experience shows, Iran will be essentially protected against an American attack once it possesses a bomb. So Iran should start building. There’s a chance that Iran wouldn’t get caught secretly building the bomb. And if Iran did get caught, would the consequences be any worse than Iran’s current state? The United States isn’t going to put boots on the ground in Iran. The worst consequence of being caught in deception is to suffer a few more bombs. Iran might not even suffer that fate, because Trump is now insisting that he obliterated Iran’s nuclear sites; it’s one and done. What would be Trump’s excuse for bombing a second time after the first raid had been so successful?
What do you suppose Iran will do?
From my own personal perspective, I hope that if Iran secretly builds a bomb, that project comes to fruition while Trump is still in office. It’s only right that Trump, and not his successor, should have to deal with the aftermath of the bombs that Trump ordered to be dropped.
In any event, it’s a little premature to be thinking of awarding Trump the Nobel Peace Prize.
But on all other scores, I was right: Trump is indeed a narcissist and a sociopath, a felon and a rapist, and all the rest.
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.
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