We have reason to be concerned about the risks of unintended consequences, but we shouldn’t ignore the historical context either, pretending like most Democrats and much of the mainstream media that this conflict somehow sprung into existence with Israel’s air campaign barely ten days ago.
There is no doubt that President Donald Trump’s decision to mount a surprise attack at three Iranian nuclear facilities is a measurable escalation accompanied by an unknown amount of risk of future retaliations or reprisals. In a free society, few things should be debated more vociferously than matters of war and peace, and we can expect and encourage supporters, detractors, and those few in the middle to speak their minds in the days to come. During these debates, we should also exhibit a healthy skepticism about blanket claims emanating from the government or elsewhere concerning the effectiveness of the strikes, the viability of Iran’s nuclear program in the future, etc. Whether intentional or otherwise, we have all witnessed far too many similar statements prove spectacularly, catastrophically wrong in the past, and all of us, even those with access to classified information, are at least partially speculating if not engaging in outright wishful thinking. This includes those who, like President Trump himself, insist the three facilities in question, Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan were destroyed beyond repair, or were barely damaged. It also includes those who insist that Iran is capable of carrying out their retaliatory threats such as entirely blocking the Straits of Hormuz, and those who insist they are completely impotent. Unfortunately, in almost all of these cases, only time will reveal the truth for a wide variety of reasons beyond the debate participant’s potential political bias. At the same time, what we should not do is ignore the historical context of these strikes, pretending like most Democrats and much of the mainstream media that this conflict somehow sprung into existence with Israel’s air campaign barely ten days ago. Even setting aside Iran’s funding and direct involvement in the atrocities perpetrated on October 7, Israel, Iran, and, by proxy, the United States have been engaged in an escalating conflict for decades, dating back to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Immediately after taking power, the Islamic Caliphate committed an act of war against the United States by seizing our sovereign embassy in Tehran and holding 52 American citizens hostage for 444 days. In 1983, Iran was behind attacks in Beirut on both our embassy (April 18, 1983) and a marine barracks (October 23, 1983) which killed 220 marines, 18 sailors, and 3 soldiers. In 1988, it is believed that Iran was directly involved in the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, killing all 259 people onboard and 11 on the ground. Since 9-11, it is estimated that Iran-backed militias were directly responsible for at least 603 US deaths in Iraq, accounting for approximately 1 in 6 casualties throughout the entire war. “During Operation Iraqi Freedom, DoD assessed that at least 603 U.S. personnel deaths in Iraq were the result of Iran-backed militants,” Navy Commander Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an email in 2019. “These casualties were the result of explosively formed penetrators (EFP), other improvised explosive devices (IED), improvised rocket-assisted munitions (IRAM), rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG), small-arms, sniper, and other attacks in Iraq,” he continued.
As recently as last year, Iranian-backed militias launched a drone strike on a US military base in Jordan that killed three people. This incident was provocative enough that President Joe Biden was compelled to respond by striking Iranian facilities in Syria and Iraq. According to US Central Command, the attacks included dozens of airstrikes at some 85 targets“with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from the United States.” “The air strikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” they added in their statement. The facilities struck included command and operations centers, intelligence centers, weapons storage sites, and others, some with a direct connection to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds force. At the time, the President noted “At my direction, US military forces struck targets at facilities in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack US forces.” “Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he added. This attack was conducted by the United States even though Iran denied being directly involved in the initial drone strike. “The US had said since the moment that attack happened that there would be a military response, and US officials like Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin said the response would come in multiple fashions. So this could very well be the first phase, but those retaliatory US air strikes have now begun,” explained Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from the Pentagon. “This is the first step, I don’t think that it will be the last one,” she added. That same year, Iran hatched an assasination plot to kill former President, then Presidential Candidate Trump. As CNN described it at the time, just days after Thomas Matthew Crooks came less than inch from killing him in Butler, PA in a said-to-be-unrelated attempt, “US authorities obtained intelligence from a human source in recent weeks on a plot by Iran to try to assassinate Donald Trump, a development that led to the Secret Service increasing security around the former president, multiple people briefed on the matter told CNN.” The plot was seen as part of a larger response to President Trump’s assassination of Qassem Soleimani on January 3, 2020. Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said the White House has been monitoring Iranian threats to former Trump administration officials “for years” including briefings to Congress. “These threats arise from Iran’s desire to seek revenge for the killing of Qassem Soleimani. We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority,” she said in a statement. It is believed that other former Trump Administration officials have been targeted as well, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Iran envoy Brian Hook, but for reasons that remained unexplained, the Trump campaign wasn’t informed about the source of the threat. “The Trump campaign was informed in passing by USSS leadership of a general uptick in threats against President Trump,” a source told NBC News, “but were not made aware of any specific threats related to Iranian individuals or groups.”
Also last year, Iran and Israel also engaged in the first direct attacks on each other’s territory in both country’s history. After Israel struck the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Iran retaliated with a drone strike on April 13, 2024, launching well over 200 drones and missiles at the Jewish state. In October 2024, Israel assassinated IRGC commander Abbas Nilforoushan, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, prompting Iran to retaliate with a ballistic missile barrage. While both Iranian attacks were successfully repelled by Israel with the aid of the United States, prominent Arab nations, and their European allies, there was an obvious intent to inflict significant damage and as I have previously noted, blocking a fist about to hit your face doesn’t mean the punch wasn’t thrown in the first place. At the time, the Biden Administration immediately claimed it as a win anyway. “You got a win. Take the win,” he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the immediate aftermath while urging him not to retaliate. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby claimed that repelling the attack was an “unprecedented success.” It showed an “unprecedented sense of resolve and determination and military capability” by the US, Israel, and other allies. “It should tell everybody else that Israel is not alone, that this was a coalition put together to help Israel defend itself,” he explained. “Iran is just increasingly further isolated in the region.” During this period, Iran was simultaneously savaging shipping in the Red Sea using the Houthis as their proxy. These attacks began as early as November 2023, and by February 2024, 40 vessels had been attacked resulting in shipments being diverted to the Cape of Good Hope, over 2,000 of them by March. Though they initially claimed to be targeting only ships linked to Israel, they ultimately targeted vessels from about a dozen other countries, impacting more than forty, and decried “American-British aggression against our country.” In May 2024, the Houthis announced a broader effort, claiming “We will target any ships heading to Israeli ports in the Mediterranean Sea in any area we are able to reach.” As early as January 2024, US and British forces began responding to these attacks with attacks of our own, using cruise missiles and airpower. The strikes continued in the early days of President Trump’s second term, even creating something of a scandal when high ranking administration officials including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth accidently added Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg to chat that should have remained top secret.
Of course, none of this means that history will prove President Trump correct in ordering the strike, but two things are apparent. First, it is reasonable to believe that we have been at war with Iran at least since their attacks on our military base in February 2024, if not for much, much longer. The fact that they are our adversary, or at least that they believe the US is their sworn adversary, and have been for some time didn’t just happen after President Trump was inaugurated, much less after Israel launched their initial round of airstrikes. President George W. Bush had infamously included them in his “Axis of Evil” in 2002 and every President along with politicians in both parties since has publicly stated that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon under any circumstances. In this context, President Trump’s decision to directly attack the interior of the country is an escalation by any reasonable standard, but not necessarily a major one. Second, the establishment, as usual, proved incapable of directly addressing or solving the underlying problem, allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium and even if you believe the agreement negotiated under President Barack Obama successfully delayed production of a nuclear weapon, terrorize their neighbors in the region. Over the past 18 months, the situation had continued to deteriorate, with mounting escalations leading up to Israel’s June 13 strike. President Trump, however, decided that the situation was untenable, that the risks of maintaining the status quo were unacceptable, and now was the time to force a climax. While this climax might well have unintended consequences, some of which we might not even be aware of yet, so did inaction. History, meanwhile, clearly shows that one of the unintended consequences of allowing a conflict to continue indefinitely by refusing to unleash the force required to decide it, can frequently be brutal, resulting in more loss of life on both sides than would’ve occurred otherwise. Americans learned this lesson the proverbial hard way in Afghanistan and Iraq, but more recently, Russia has been fighting in Ukraine for over three years, Israel in Gaza for almost two, grinding out dead bodies on a deadly basis with no end in sight. President Trump believes there’s a different course, one where overwhelming force applied in a targeted manner, can decide a situation once and for all. History will show whether he’s right or wrong, but he has good reason to make that bet, at least in my opinion.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 