Not Excited, Not Outraged

The arguments about Iran are so polarised that no one wants to admit that several things are true at once.

1) You'd be a fool not to have serious reservations about the idea of a regime change war, especially in the Middle East.

2) You'd also be a fool to allow terrorist-funding lunatics to develop nuclear weapons.

Neither the people condemning these strikes, nor the people cheering them on know how this is going to work out. So far, Trump Administration interventions have been extraordinarily successful in achieving valid objectives within a highly limited scope.

The strikes on Iran during the 12 day war achieved destruction of several nuclear facilities. The Venezuela operation decapitated the hostile regime and replaced Maduro with a non-hostile leader. Both also achieved significant "don't fuck with us" deterrence globally. However, it is not remotely clear at this moment in time whether something similar can be achieved in Iran.

I understand and fully empathise with the people who think regime change is not going to work in Iran and you'll end up with the same as what you had or worse. And I understand just as much the people who celebrate an evil dictator being killed and Iran's nuclear and military assets being degraded further.

The thing we do not know, and the thing that will determine whether this has all been worth it, is what the future leadership of Iran will look like. This seems to me to be the biggest risk Donald Trump has taken at any time in his first or second term. If it pays off, the reward both domestically and globally will be huge. If it doesn't and things go south, it could derail his Presidency and define his legacy like Iraq did for Blair and Bush.

Very few people have any idea which of these scenarios is more likely and one thing is for sure: none of them are talking about it on social media because they're all sitting in command bunkers, not Twitter.

I hope the people of Iran are released from living under tyranny. I hope the peoples of the Middle East can live in peace. I hope the takeaway for any would-be terrorist is the realisation that October 7 might not have been such a good idea. I hope that with the Middle East stabilised, the US can turn its attentions to the theatres that really matter to the security of the West: Russia and China.

Whether any of that happens remains to be seen and it seems the hardest thing for anyone to do is to not express an opinion before the smoke has cleared. We will find out which way it goes in the coming days.

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