Alternatively ….
“From War With Iran?:
Were the United States to place secondary sanctions on all manner of goods, especially food, the effect would be far greater than an invasion by the entire U.S. army. How the Iranian people would deal with the choice between starving and ending their government’s war on America would be their business.
From Iranian Analytics:
Trump’s base accepts that he is backing out of the Middle East firing, not firing to get in…. The current Iranian crisis is complex and dangerous. And by all means retaliation must be designed to prevent more Iranian violence and aggression rather than aimed at a grandiose agenda of regime change or national liberation. But so far the Iranians, not the U.S., are making all the blunders.
From Attack on Qassem Soleimani was deterrence, not escalation:
Iran knows it faces a choice it didn’t think it faced before. It can vow hellish revenge, but now it has had a taste of the hell the United States can rain down in response. And while the mullahs are extreme, they do not appear to be imprudent. Ruthless self-interest might have gotten them going in the first place, and it is what might restrain them in the end. That is how deterrence works. And that is the bet Trump and the United States made by letting the Iranians know we were not going to take their aggression lying down.
From Targeting Soleimani: Trump was justified, legally and strategically:
A congressional authorization of military force would strengthen the president’s hand. It would not require that force be used (or at least used to the full extent of the authorization), but it would show our enemies that our nation is ready to act in our defense. The strategies of Trump’s predecessors were to hope that a committed jihadist enemy would come to its senses; hope that it would realize its purported interest in regional stability; and hope that by bribing it with billions of dollars in sanctions relief, ransom, and an industrial-strength nuclear program, we could de-escalate the conflict. President Trump’s strategy is to remove the enemy’s most effective military asset (who will not be easily replaceable), to demonstrate to the mullahs what can happen when resolve backs our exponentially superior capabilities, and to continue squeezing the regime with punishing economic sanctions — as it is pressured by the increasingly restive Iranian people. Peace through strength is the better plan.
From Trump Calls the Ayatollah’s Bluff:
Deterrence, says Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, is credibly holding at risk something your adversary holds dear. If the reports out of Iraq are true, President Trump has put at risk the entirety of the Iranian imperial enterprise even as his maximum-pressure campaign strangles the Iranian economy and fosters domestic unrest. That will get the ayatollah’s attention. And now the United States must prepare for his answer. The bombs over Baghdad? That was Trump calling Khamenei’s bluff. The game has changed. But it isn’t over.”
The Ayatollahs are now dealing with a NYC property developer businessman, a far different beast to the previous Community Organiser. If the Ays expect Obama type outcomes I fear there’ll be tears before bedtime.