A massive monument to a half century of futile US-Iran policy will soon be floating near the Middle East.
The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier is steaming towards the region, as Washington builds up forces prior to a possible strike against Iran’s nuclear program.
The hulking ship is no stranger to these waters. It was from its decks that helicopters launched towards Iran in 1980 in a disastrous failed effort to rescue American hostages held by Iranian revolutionaries at the US embassy in Tehran.
Operation Eagle Claw was cancelled in the Iranian desert after two of the helicopters got into mechanical difficulties. Then another helicopter collided with a US refueling aircraft on the ground and eight US servicemen were killed. The thwarted operation helped destroy Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
Iran has confounded every president since. Some, like President Barack Obama have tried dialogue. Others like President George W. Bush, who branded Iran part of an “axis of evil,” imposed isolation and pressure. But antagonism from a clerical regime that is at its core institutionally hostile to the US has never faded.
Now it’s Donald Trump’s turn.
After days of threatening potential US military action against Iranian nuclear facilities following Israel’s onslaught on the Islamic Republic, the White House said he’d give Tehran two weeks to see if a last-ditch deal could be found to eradicate its nuclear program.
Trump has been wrestling with his dilemma for days – ever since Israel started a war it can’t finish. Only the US has the capacity to potentially destroy the Iranian nuclear plant at Fordow with its bunker-busting bombs. But doing so risks igniting the kind of open-ended war in the Middle East that he always vowed to avoid. The president’s MAGA base is split on the issue, even as old school Republican hawks call for him to unleash US B-2 bombers.
Some conservative commentators are urging Trump to go all-in and even want him to help the Israelis to destroy the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This crowd seems to have forgotten the catastrophe sparked by their demands for regime change in Iraq two decades ago.
Armchair strategists in Washington look even more ridiculous against the backdrop of 70 years of American attempts to shape Iranian politics.
In 1953, the CIA helped British intelligence agencies stage a coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. His ouster opened the way for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi whose corrupt and repressive rule created the conditions for the Islamic revolution and Iran’s current regime.
In the 1980s, the US backed Iraq over Iran as the neighbors fought a horrific war.
But it was not long before the United States was at odds with Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. His overthrow after the American invasion in 2003 led to an Iranian-backed insurgency that killed hundreds of US troops and handed Tehran huge influence in Iraq. The US, of course, left Iraq after winning a shock-and-awe war but losing the peace after it dismantled the Iraq state with no plan for the day after.
This history of US incompetence is one reason why Trump’s political supporters are getting antsy. After all, many of those who did the fighting and dying in the post-911 wars came from heartland towns where the president draws strong support.
Deep US disillusionment with forever wars brewed the political cocktail that led to Trump’s political ascent. He’s not forgotten. Last month in Saudi Arabia — in a regional tour which showed he was more interested in creaming off cash from the region than waging war there, he decried failed US nation builders who “wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists (who) were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
Ironies are piling up.
Trump might not be in this spot if he’d not trashed an Obama-agreed deal to keep Iranian nuclear enrichment low. Now he’s in President George W. Bush’s shoes, mulling a potential Middle East war based on possibly questionable intelligence.
Trump must choose whether US and global security will be secured or undermined by a US operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
And here comes the Nimitz, full ahead for one final war zone before decommissioning at the end of her current cruise.
Trump better hope she’s not a bad omen.