Tag: Iran

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 16JUN2026 – An Alternative Iranian Plan

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I would love to hear the details of these plans, but so far everything I see is in the “Trust me its Good” phase. Trump is a skilled negotiator, unfortunately, the Islamic tradition holds that negotiating with those not in Islam (Dar Al Harb, the House or Abode of War, any nation NOT under Islamic rule in most interpretations of Islamic tradition) is forbidden except for brief periods and in those negotiations deception is not just acceptable but the rule. This is a culture far more dangerous than say the Japanese of the WWII era with their bushido code. That group took mass firebombing and direct destruction of 2 cities, and without the direct intervention of their Emperor (and luck having a coup fail) we would have had to fight on.

The terms need to be dictated, not negotiated, and enforced with a ruthlessness we seem no longer able to muster. At a minimum, these must include:
1) All enriched nuclear material must be handed over to the US within 30 days. Any nuclear material found in country after that period is grounds for declaring the treaty null and void potential peremptory destruction of the site.
2) There must be constant presence of US/Israeli (not IAEA the feckless boobs they are) inspection teams and they must be able to perform surprise inspections with 3 hours or less notice. Violation of this clause yields the same actions as in 1)
3) All missiles and drones of range greater the 50 Miles shall be destroyed and construction of them forbidden. The presence of the remaining limited range weapons within 100 miles of the Straits of Hormuz is forbidden. Violation of this clause results in the immediate destruction of the offending item by whatever means seems necessary and immediate termination of the treaty.
4) All tanks, IFV, Ships , and Military aircraft (fixed wing or Rotary) shall be impounded in such a fashion that they can be inspected by US National technical means. The removal of vehicles from said impounds without notification shall be cause for the destruction of the removed vehicles as well as ALL other impounded vehicles at the discretion of US/Israeli forces. Violation of this clause will indicate termination of the treaty.
5) The presence of Hospitals and places of worship shall be marked and provided to the Us/Israeli forces. The presence of any weaponry or military items in violation of the traditional codes of war for perfidy shall make attacks on such perfidious sites free of any taint of the violation of the rules of war and be a reason for termination of this treaty
6)The US/Israel may overfly Iran freely for military or national reconnaissance purposes without intervention by the Iranian government. Any resistance to this may (up to and including illuminating said vehicles with search or fire control radars) be met with destruction of said resistance by whatever means deemed appropriate. This constitutes a reason for the termination of the treaty
7) The government of Iran shall officially sign an instrument of surrender explicitly specifying these conditions within 14 days of agreeing to this treaty

Honestly, as draconian as the terms I specify are, I do not believe they would be sufficient, even if we were willing to follow through. The only safe path I see is an ugly one: reduce Iran’s technological level to the early 19th century and then let Israel target them as needed to keep them there. I really hate that, but a Germany/Japan like occupation is just not in the cards. We have neither the stomach, the experience, nor the troop levels to provide that kind of oversight. Our treaties with Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War have taught us that not responding aggressively to violations is problematic against this particular culture. We need to make sure the nuclear threat to us and our Allies (and it is NOT just Israel, the missiles used to attack Diego Garcia can also reach Paris, Berlin and London) is gone, and let the locals deal with Iran as they see fit.

Forty-Seven Years of Insanity and Counting

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Well, Trump says the Iranian war is over.  Hmmm.  How does that work?  Does Iran stop attacking its neighbors and does that mean Israel and Hezbollah are ready to stop trading missiles too?  I saw gasoline below $4/gallon today.  Is that because of these headlines today or is that just the latest price bouncing off of lower demand?

Of course, I’d love for this to be the end of this war.  It would give the Republicans a big boost in November and would almost certainly deny Democrats the Senate.  But it just doesn’t seem likely to me that Tehran will just back off and play nice.  It’s just not in their DNA.  But of course, I’ll give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt and wait and see if he’s pulled off a coup with this announcement.

I’ve always wondered just how dysfunctional the Iranian nation is.  Back in the 1980s they fought a war with Iraq in which a million young Iranians died during “human wave” attacks against a mechanized Iraqi army.  The stupidity of something like this can’t be overstated.  But now the next generation of Iranians seem to be completely directionless.  They despise the mullahs and hate their religious extremism and mismanagement of the economy but they have been brutalized by the Basij Resistance Force to such an extent that they’ve withdrawn back into their homes and have failed to organize any resistance of their own.

Think about this country, since 1979 their whole people have been led by lunatics whose whole plan is to restore a theocratic government that fell apart almost a thousand years ago because it has never had a reliable way of choosing new leaders and because its tenets are not conducive to a thriving society.  But at the same time, the strongest faction in the country is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.  The actual power in Iran is in their hands and they are in control of both the armed forces and the Basij Resistance Force that they use to control the general population and crush dissent.  And they’ve become so strongly ensconced that really the only way to pry power from them would be to send in an enormous army and defeat them on the ground.  And everyone knows we’re not going to do that.

So, what we have is a perpetual stalemate.  Iran spends its oil money on building bunkers in their mountains and filling them with missiles and drones.  And they use these weapons to supply Hezbollah and Hamas with the means to kill Israelis.  I guess the day could finally come where Iranians just get so fed up with their miserable lives that they rise up and murder the Basij agents with their bare hands.  Or the Israelis just get so good at technological warfare that they manage to infiltrate all of Iran’s bunkers and blow them all up at the same time and follow it up with exploding cell phones that kill the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in one fell swoop.

But until one or the other of these two fantasies come true Iran will exist to nauseate the world of normal people that just want a sanity to prevail.

02APR2026 – This’N’That

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So, Trump gave his war update.  Well, he’s still the king of hyperbole.  Everything is the biggest and the greatest.  All the damage to Iran is total and catastrophic.  And he went through the length of all the wars the US has fought in from WWI on and after mentioning how many years each of these wars lasted, he said that this war has been going for only one month.  And then he said that it will only take another three weeks to finish bombing Iran into the “stone age.”  Hmmm.

I hope he’s right.  I don’t think staying in Iran for more than a few more weeks is going to help us.  The financial damage will start to build up.  And the chances of large-scale casualties keep growing.  At this point if there is no interest on the part of the Iranian population to rise up against their government by armed insurrection then there isn’t a realistic way of ending the current regime that doesn’t involve an American ground invasion.  So, blast all of the targets we can find and then declare victory and step back to our Middle East bases and block Hormuz and let the Iranians and the Chinese do without their money and oil respectively.  In the meantime, the Europeans can buy Venezuelan oil (at an elevated price of course) and do without their cheap Chinese crap for the time being.

I saw that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the psychiatrist in Colorado who was practicing conversion talk therapy on LGBTQ adolescents versus Colorado’s ban of the procedure.  Now that is interesting.  That’s going to cause a lot of problems in blue states for sure.  Good for the Court.

Now Trump is going to visit the Court during its consideration of whether his executive order banning citizenship to the children of illegal aliens (so-called birthright citizenship) is forbidden by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.  I wonder if Trump will request to address the court during these procedures or whether he just wants to show solidarity with his legal team defending his executive order.  Reading the news sites they all stress the fact that the initial questions from the Justices seemed extremely skeptical of the administration’s justification for the executive order.  Well, of course the news sites are.  They all lean to the Left and so they exhibit their preference in every way they can.  But I’m not pessimistic about our chances.  It’s pretty easy to see that the 14th Amendment was enacted to handle a very specific class of people, the former slaves and their descendants.  How this would be relevant today is not in any way clear.  Following the obvious intent is simple and if the Justices use logic, they can easily see that this intent does not extend to the children of people breaking the law by illegally entering this country.  Of course, I may be overly hopeful about the courage of some of the Justices but I’m willing to hold onto my optimism until the decision is handed down.

Well, that’s enough for now.

18MAR2026 – Iran Again

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Anyone who has been reading this site for any length of time knows that I’ve had enough war to last me a lifetime.  George W Bush was the one who saw to that with his horrific Iraq debacle.  So, what’s going on in Iran is not something I want to see continuing until disaster inevitably strikes.  But at the same time, me ignoring it doesn’t really make it go away.  So, I think I’ll make an observation today.  And that point is, the Israelis really know how to find their enemies and blow them up.

Today it was announced that they not only found and killed Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council but they also managed to blow up Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij force along with the whole top level of his command structure who were meeting with him.  Now this is just a few weeks after they blew up Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran.  And reports are circulating that his son who is now the Supreme Leader was also gravely injured in that attack.  Apparently, the Mossad has more than just good surveillance in Iran.  They either have an extensive network of informants or they’ve managed to embed electronic surveillance everywhere around Tehran.

What I read today is that they’ve placed bounties on the heads of all the most important Iranian leaders and informants are managing to provide pinpoint locations for these unlucky leaders.  And that is exactly what is needed.  The Basij force are the low-level thugs that the IRGC sends out into the streets to mow down protestors with automatic weapons fire.  And even these low-level goons are starting to feel the heat.  Somehow the Israelis have managed to attack Basij checkpoints on the streets of Tehran with armed drones.  I can imagine that tactics like these over the course of a few months could turn the Basij into an organization with a membership problem.  Shooting unarmed protestors is any thug’s dream job.  Standing around at a street corner checkpoint waiting for a drone to blow your head off is much less desirable.  The day may come when Iranians can be organized into a militia to take back their country from the ayatollahs and thugs.

Well, anyway that is the center of Trump’s and Netanyahu’s plan.  It sounds exciting on paper.  My only problem with it is this.  Are the Iranian protestors brave enough to organize and protect themselves with guns?  I’m sure the US and Israel would be happy to provide them with a few hundred thousand rifles and ammunition.  But where will they find the Iranians to organize themselves into a standing army?  The problem is that the Iranians who are willing to form an army already are the army.  The IRGC and the Basij are those Iranians.  We may be able to degrade the leadership and destroy a lot of the military assets of Iran’s armed forces.  But we can’t kill all of them.  So, we need a new Iranian army.  Are their men to form it?

Trump and Iran

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So, I feel like I’ve been down this road before.  I remember when George W Bush said we had to go into Iraq.  And I was gung-ho.  We’d blitz Saddam and drag him off and then give Iran the same treatment and the world would be peaceful and quiet from then on.  And we’d do it by remote control like some big old video game where everyone comes home in one piece and that would be the end of that.

Well, that’s twenty plus years ago and we’re all a lot older and wiser now, I thought.  So, what the hell does Donald Trump think he’s going to do with this Iran thing?  Iran is bigger and uglier than Iraq was.  Sure, half of its people hate their own government and are celebrating the bombing of the Republican Guards and the death of Ali Khamenei.  All of that sounds great but when the missile launchers and the other long-distance weapons have been neutralized but the bad guys are still the ones with all the machine guns killing civilians what happens then?  Are we going to send in the Marines?  And what happens when the body bags start coming home?  That would be the end of the Republicans for another decade.

What occurred to me was that maybe the CIA and Mossad can funnel guns to the people who want to get rid of the Islamic State.  If they have enough actual men who are willing to go head-to-head against the Republican Guards then a small team of trainers from these intelligence agencies could stand up a credible force within Iran to overwhelm the Islamic State with the help of targeted aerial attacks from the Israelis and Americans.  But is that really going to happen?  I’ve read that Mossad is already on the ground in Iran and has been for years.  That explains how they’ve been able to sabotage things like the Iranian nuclear program and Hezbollah’s cell phones.  Maybe they really will be able to topple this regime in the next few weeks.  It’s definitely possible and Israel has an existential reason for wanting the Iranian regime to disappear.  If the Islamic State were toppled tomorrow, Hezbollah and Hamas lose their paymaster and greatest ally.  Most of the violence in the Middle East loses its sponsor.  Without the mullahs it’s even possible that Lebanon could become a normal country again.  And a peaceful and prosperous Iran would change the whole balance of power in the Middle East and might even stabilize the whole region.  Think of the amount of misery that would disappear from that tortured region.

Well, those are all the good words I can think of for a situation that is fraught with peril.  I just hope Trump knows exactly what he is doing and what to do in every one of a thousand scenarios that could happen in that insane corner of the world.  When I think of all the possible ways things can head south very fast and very badly It makes my head ache.  Okay, Khamenei is dead.  Good.  Now what?

Martyrs of Various Sorts

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So, what to talk about tonight?  Well, the crazies are out in force throughout the blue states.  I read they’ve set up a “no-go” zone in Minneapolis.  I imagine that won’t go so well.  When ICE shows up to arrest the illegal aliens among them, there is sure to be violence and probably deaths.  Similar stuff is happening in all the other crazy places like Portland and Philadelphia.  I heard about the two illegal aliens that got shot going up against ICE.  So, I guess this is the status quo from now on.  I give Trump and his people all my sympathy for having to do a really awful job.  And I’m very glad that they haven’t given up.

As far as the Iranian and Venezuelan and the Greenlandian fronts, what can I say?  Venezuela is easy.  They’ll do as they’re told.  Iran is going to be interesting.  It’s obvious that the Israelis have infiltrated the country and have in the last couple of days begun assassinating IRGC commanders, even using drones in the process.  If that is the case then I assume they’ll start lending support to the rebellion.  I guess they’ll provide them with guns and intel about troop movements and whatever other aid they can muster.  But how this ends up is anyone’s guess.  The Islamic Republic has been a nexus for evil and death since I was a very young man.  I would dearly love for this to be their last gasp.  And I wouldn’t even care if the Ayatollah was packed off to Moscow or anywhere else they’d have him.  Just having Iran as a normal country would be an amazing improvement for the whole world.  Hezbollah, Hamas and all the other crazies would be deprived of a base and a source of funding.  And all the countries around Iran could finally relax and try to fix their own problems instead of battling the religious maniacs that the ayatollahs kept unleashing throughout the Middle East.

As for Greenland, who cares?  Does it really matter one way or another?  For pity’s sake it’s just a big chunk of ice in the middle of the Arctic.  If Trump wants to haggle with the Danes, let him.  No harm, no foul.

I finally saw the video from the point of view of the ICE agent who shot the female driver.  Her crazy “wife” was taunting the ICE agents and it looks like the driver just sped into the agent.  I wouldn’t fault the shooter at all.  A car is a deadly weapon when you drive it at someone and a cop knows that someone who tries to run him over is basically asking to be shot.  I’m sad for her kids especially ending up in the custody of the crazy lesbian who married their mother but Minneapolis and places like it are full of martyrs to the cause of Leftism.  They need useful idiots to do stupid things like what she did.  The question today is how many more like her are there willing to get shot.  We’ll know soon.

Rename it Trumpland

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Trump had a press conference about opening up Venezuela to American Oil Companies.  Of course it was full of “Trump speak;” the greatest this, the greatest that, etc.  But what it came down to is Trump is telling the Venezuelans that American oil companies will be returning to Venezuela and will be under the protection of the American military.  That’s pretty damn good.

These companies had all of their oil extraction and processing equipment seized when Communist Hugo Chávez became the leader in Venezuela.  He nationalized the industry and it proceeded to fall apart.  Instead of engineers the industry was handed over to political hacks.  They brought in the Cubans to help them and they proved that they could make a fabulously oil rich country into a basket case in just a decade or so.

Of course, Trump didn’t provide a lot of the details on how these things will be arranged.  But based on how things worked before Chávez botched it up, the oil companies and Venezuela will both make lots of money.  And all of that extracted oil will lower the price of American gasoline and oil by quite a bit once it’s going strong.

As I said, “Trump speak” is maddening.  It’s like listening to one of Muhammed Ali’s jibber-jabber brag sessions before his fights.  Everything is over the top and outrageous but the results are there.  Ali was the greatest fighter of his generation and Trump is the only President in forty years to actually produce the results he promised.  So, I’ll let him have his bragging session and then I’ll look for a translation into English and the bottom line.  He’s pretty smart.  Increasing oil production (enormously) will have a major positive effect on consumer costs in the United States.  And the revenues that these oil companies will gain will also improve our GDP.  And capturing Maduro let’s Latin America know that Trump doesn’t play games with tin-pot dictators shipping fentanyl to this country.  I expect to see positive results in Mexico and maybe even China because of this.

Okay so where does that leave us with Iran and Ukraine and Greenland?  Well, I may have underestimated the people of Iran.  The actions there have grown from protests to open rebellion.  They’re burning down police stations and IRGC barracks and so far, the military doesn’t seem to be able to stop it.  The size of the crowds is staggering.  There are literally millions of people in the streets of dozens of large cities.  I think the Ayatollah is going to take a plane ride to Moscow and join Assad in the section of Moscow reserved for former Middle Eastern dictators in retirement.  It looks that active.

Ukraine is hopeless.  The Russians and Ukrainians will fight to the last man.  God help them all.

Now what the hell are we going to do with Greenland?  Military bases, oil and mineral extraction?  Ice for drinks?  Trump says he wants to buy it.  I mean, who figures out a fair price for Greenland?  But as I’ve said, after you get finished with the bluster get a translation into English and chances are you’ll discover that Trump is right about Greenland too.  But what do you bet he wants to rename it Trumpland?

Be Careful, Donald

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Well, Trump is definitely disrupting things.  The question is can he keep the whole machine from shaking itself apart.  Venezuela doesn’t bother me.  That’s not even a real country.  It’s a mafia neighborhood with a money-printing machine in the basement.

Iran on the other hand is a much bigger and more dangerous neighborhood.  Their economy is in tatters and the middle-class is so starved that they dared to face off in the streets against the thugs that Khamenei employs to silence all protestors, with a crow bar.  Trump threw in a threat against the mullahs if they start murdering the protestors in the street.  And that is his place as leader of the “free world” I guess.  But is it just an idle threat?  And will these protests really go anywhere?

The last time protests accomplished anything in Iran was 1979 when the Islamists overthrew the Shah of Iran and brought the Ayatollah Khomeini out of exile to begin the Islamic Republic.  And that kicked off the Islamic Revolution by holding Americans hostage for over a year.  Is it possible that enough Iranians are angry enough to risk torture and death to kick the mullahs out of power and turn Iran back into a modern country?  I guess it’s possible but why now?

I read that inflation in Iran is currently at 43%.  That is definitely getting close to some kind of breaking point.  But standing up to men with machine guns and torture cells takes a lot of guts.  I’m far from convinced that anything will come of the Iranian protests.  Now maybe it will soften up the regime into cutting a deal with the West.  Maybe they’ll agree to end their funding of terrorist groups and in that way begin to have economic sanctions lifted against their oil exports other commercial enterprises.

Now, all of this going on at the same time that Ukraine and Russia are battling to the death may not be a coincidence.  Both Venezuela and Iran are Russian allies and trading partners.  These situations may be an attempt to destabilize the Russian economy.  Sanctions against Russia have been skirted in part by using oil tankers that trade outside of the western countries and this is the same strategy that Iran and Venezuela have used.  Perhaps Trump is ratcheting up the pressure on all of these “shadow fleets” to destabilize the economies of all three of these countries.

And maybe it will work.  Iran is badly hurting and Russia is beginning to suffer from the combination of sanctions and war fatigue.  And Venezuela was a sitting duck for US military and covert attacks.  Maybe Trump will get a trifecta of victories.  He might even get his Nobel Peace Prize.

But I’ll have to say it’s an exceedingly dangerous game he’s playing.  There must be dozens of Iranian sleeper cells that snuck in during Biden’s open border policy.  What if the mullahs grow desperate and decide to spread some chaos in the land of the “Great Satan” before they lose control of their own country?  I get so tired of these places on the map that are nothing but misery for their own people and anyone that gets involved with them.  Donald, be careful.

Volatilized Radioactive Cloud

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Reading the reports last night, the United States of America attacked three Iranian nuclear material production facilities with a combination of Tomahawk missiles and GBU-57 series MOP’s (Massive Ordnance Penetrators).  Depending on which side you get your news from either all of the targets were completely destroyed or no damage at all was done.  Okay, that seems to cover the full range of possibilities.

The part I’m unsure of is whether we are now in a state of active war with Iran.  Iran thinks so.  Probably Israel hopes so.  But President Trump doesn’t feel that way.  He says hostilities are limited to the already completed attacks and so we should all just move on.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say there will be “reverberations.”

But maybe Trump knows more about the situation than I do.  I guess I have to hope (fervently) that he knows a whole lot more than I do and that this deeper knowledge led him to approve the attacks without fearing dire retaliation.  Yes, that is the hope at this point.

But I’ve got to say I’m quite worried that this will ramp up terrorist attacks by Iranian and Iranian-proxy groups.  We know that for the last four years foreigners have entered our southern border with impunity.  Would it surprise anyone if this included Iranian sleeper cells whose training would allow them to kill a large number of Americans in terrorist attacks almost anywhere in the United States?

And if there are attacks with large numbers of casualties will this lead to a full-blown war with Iran?  Will our sons be sent to the desert to fight?  Again?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions.  That’s why we hired Donald Trump.  He said no more “forever wars.”  And for better or worse he’s going to be held to that statement.  So, Mr. President, get on with your big beautiful bill and your deportations and your energy agenda and all that but don’t think for a minute we want another George W Bush or even a Joe Biden.  No more body bags, no more lives wasted sitting in tanks in a Mid-East desert for twenty years.  We could get that from the Democrats without even trying.

Well, that’s my two cents.  Maybe some folks want to cut him some slack because Iran has been a thorn in our side since 1979 and blowing up their stuff seems like payback.  Well, if that’s the game then nuke them and be done with it.  Give them both barrels and put an end to it.  But I’m pretty sure that would be just the beginning.  We’d end up with a harvest of mushroom clouds stretching right around the world from Moscow to Beijing and Washington to San Francisco.  And even the Neo-con psychos would probably agree that would be a “suboptimal outcome.”

Alright.  Let’s wait and see.  Back to my chores and summer fun.  Back to my writing and photos.  I have to process a bunch of shots I took at a truck show.  If I’m not a volatilized radioactive cloud by tomorrow I’ll have those pictures ready by next week.

President Trump in the Arena

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In 2018 and 2019 I posted Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech as one of my quotes of the day.  Here it is:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I thought of this quote when all the usual suspects started criticizing the President for his courageous decision to eliminate General Soleimani.  Chuck Schumer criticized the President for not consulting Congress.  The stupidity of this argument being that Congress is a sieve of destructive leaks and passing along this information might have compromised the mission and even led to intelligence personnel being captured or killed.

Then you have that nitwit Pelosi claiming that Soleimani was such an important Iranian that killing him was unthinkable.  So, the man who personally arranged for the killing and maiming of thousands of American servicemen and who was currently looking to increase that score shouldn’t be eliminated because his work was too important.  I know of nothing more idiotic said by a top US political leader since Pelosi’s last blunder where she claimed that we had to institute Obamacare before we knew what it included.  She is indeed a dope for all seasons.

And all the talking heads of the networks working overtime to frighten the American public with propaganda about American deaths from the missile barrage and declaring that killing Soleimani was an unthinkable tactical blunder that we would all rue.

All of these naysayers are the critics of Roosevelt’s speech.  Bystanders sniping at the Man in the Arena.  But President Trump is that man.  In a situation like the current United States deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan there is no safe or easy choice.  Every day is fraught with peril and every decision must be weighed.

With the Iranians looking to distract their citizens from their poverty the mullahs used Soleimani to generate good news by attacking their enemies through proxies in other places like Iraq and Syria.  And with the knowledge that President Trump wants to withdraw US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and place them in secure bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait it would be easy for the Iranians to claim a victory if they attacked our vacating troops.  They would spin it that they chased us out.

If the President does intend to redeploy our troops away from Iraq and Afghanistan it would be preferable to accompany such a change with a show of strength to remind the hostile (and friendly) nations in the area that American military strength isn’t something to be despised.

To that end killing Soleimani just as he was ramping up attacks on Americans in Iraq was a high risk, high reward option.  Killing him in such a situation demonstrated our operational intelligence capability, technological superiority and the high regard our President has for the safety of our troops.  He would show that the death of an American contractor in Iraq needed to be avenged with the killing of the man who was ultimately responsible for that death.  And no consideration was given to the rank of either man.

But of course, consideration was given to what the retaliation by the Iranians could have been.  Getting into a major war with a regional power like Iran is a very serious situation.  Such a war would be a horrible problem for an election effort and would throw the advantage to the Democrats in November.

And that risk means that ordering the attack on Soleimani was a very risky decision that called for the most careful exercise of judgement.  None of the other men who served as President in the last thirty years, neither of the Bushes or Clinton or Obama would have taken that risk under the present circumstances.  They would have hunkered down and endured the slow drip of casualties and then withdrawn our troops under fire.  President Trump showed a fine sense of tactical judgement and he has been rewarded by circumstances that put him in a strong strategic position with respect to Iran.  The Man in the Arena deserves praise and recognition for his wisdom and courage.