Stop the "calibration" and get serious about Iran

The Brooklyn Dodgers had a black pitcher named Joe Black. He debuted in 1952, when black players were still taunted with racial epithets by opposing players.

One day when Black was warming up, some players on the Cincinnati Reds bench serenaded him with a chorus of “Old Black Joe.” Black, who had one of the best fastballs in the game, responded by knocking down all nine Reds starters the first time he faced them.

Asked why he threw at the lineup so indiscriminately, Black responded, “I figured there must be some crooners among them.”

This story came to my mind when I saw David Ignatius state that the Biden administration “must identify precisely which Iranian proxy launched the deadly drone (that killed three Americans) and determine whether it did so on orders from Tehran.”

Why “must” Biden do this? Ignatius doesn’t say.

Various militias have been attacking U.S. forces for months. Any of these attacks could have killed Americans.

The standard for striking Iranian backed militias should be a reasonable suspicion that they have attacked our forces. There is no need to “identify precisely” which one sent the deadly drone. Nor is there any need for certainty about who launched previous attacks.

Any Iranian backed militia is an enemy of the U.S. Hit the suspect ones and, to paraphrase Joe Black, there will some attackers of Americans among them.

As for determining whether Iran gave the order to attack, again, why? We know that Iran funds these militias. We know that Iranian-sponsored forces have been killing Americans troops in Iraq for years. And we have good reason to believe that forces dependent on Iran for funding would not take action against the U.S. without the approval of their paymaster.

This is reason enough to hold Iran accountable for the lethal drone attack. We don’t need to find a cable issuing an order or an approval.

Let’s step back and look at the big picture. Since October, forces funded by Iran have caused the infliction of an enormous amount of damage in the Middle East. Israel has suffered horribly because Iran’s proxy attacked. Gaza has suffered even more as a result of the war that proxy triggered. Lebanon and the West Bank have also felt the effects.

In addition, world trade has suffered thanks to the Iranian-backed Houthis. And now, three American soldiers have been killed.

The only player that has paid no price is the one behind all of the suffering — Iran. As long as Iran doesn’t suffer for the damage its proxies have caused, these proxies will go on inflicting damage.

Therefore, there is no need to determine whether Iran ordered or approved the deadly drone attack. A U.S. attack on Iran is fully justified without such a determination.

Let’s be honest, though. A U.S. attack on Iran would risk war. And it’s possible that either the U.S. wouldn’t win that war or that the cost of the war would outweigh the gains from winning. The first possibility strikes me as remote and the second as unlikely.

However, those in a better position to know may reach a different conclusion. They may decide that if we strike Iran, the probability of war is high and the probability that the war will go well for the U.S. isn’t.

If that’s what they conclude, then let’s remove our forces from harm’s way, which probably means removing them from the region. By now it’s clear that only by striking Iran in some fashion can we prevent attacks on our forces. If we’re not willing to strike Iran, then we owe it to our troops to pull them out of danger.

Are there options short of striking the interior of Iran that might finally cause the mullahs to put an end to attacks against American forces? Maybe, but none, in my view, that doesn’t involve attacking Iran’s direct interests.

To me, the options for dealing with Iran are (1) strikes inside of Iran, (2) strikes against Iran’s oil export infrastructure and/or its navy, (3) strikes against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps outside of Iran, and (4 ) some combination of the above. Whichever of these measures we select, the goal, in the words of Sen. Lindsey Graham, should be to “hit Iran now; hit them hard.”

Meanwhile, the White House should stop saying, via its spokesman John Kirby, that “we’re not looking for war with Iran.” Such talk has already emboldened Iran. It will continue to do so.

I also want to address a statement by the leading congressional voice against escalation — Rep. Seth Moulton, a former Marine who served in Iraq. Moulton responded to statements like Graham’s with this:

To the chicken hawks calling for war with Iran, you’re playing into the enemy’s hands — and I’d like to see you send your sons and daughters to fight. We must have an effective, strategic response on our terms and our timeline. Deterrence is hard; war is worse.

Thank you for your service, Congressman, but name calling and ad hominem attacks don’t cut it. Your tours in Iraq don’t give you any authority that those who haven’t served lack. And even if they did, you wouldn’t have more authority than others who have served on the ground in combat zones, like Sen. Tom Cotton. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and calls for “devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East.” Unless Moulton wants U.S. military policy determined by polling veterans of foreign wars, he should stop the name calling and the rank pulling.

As for having “an effective, strategic response on our terms,” of course, we need that. But until Moulton explains why anything short of the measures I described above would likely be effective, these are just weasel words.

As for Moulton’s statement that “deterrence is hard; war is worse,” don’t expect it to appear in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Deterrence isn’t just hard, it’s impossible in this context unless backed up by a credible threat of war.

Finally, the claim that war with Iran would play into its hands is nonsense. Iran doesn’t want war with the U.S. Heck, it doesn’t even want war with Israel, as is clear from Hezbollah’s limited engagement along the Israel-Lebanon border.

If Iran wanted war with the U.S., it would claim responsibility for the drone attack. What Iran really wants is exactly what it’s getting from Joe Biden — the ability to cause maximum damage to U.S. interests with minimum response by the U.S.