Well, one of ‘em, at any rate. These days, one of a great, great many, seems like.

Trump Fires Back at Tucker Carlson Over Israel-Iran Strikes
Trump is firing back at those who say that supporting Israel doesn’t necessarily serve American interests and is thus not “America First.” He explained it all to The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer, who asked the president a question about the views of people like (TuckerCarlson.

“Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” Trump told Scherer. “For those people who say they want peace — you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.”

Bold mine, just to highlight exactly what I’m talking about here. Far as I can determine, these are the horns of our geat contemporary dilemna: assuming we DO have any sort of obligation to end the threat presented to Western democracies by terror-sponsorong rogue states of which Iran is the undisputed ring-leader—insofar as it really lies within our power to do so—then how far do we let the West’s kinda-sorta Reverse Prime Directive requiring that we mind our own friggin’ beeswax go to hold us back?

Just spitballing here, folks, that’s all. Seems to me it’s a pretty interesting thought experiment; not saying I buy into any of it, on either side.

Update! What if…?

If the Iranian Regime Falls, What Will Follow?
A sudden collapse of the Iranian regime looks like a real possibility.

As far as I know, the Israelis have no plans to take out Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, but they are systematically dismantling the pillars of state power underneath him. The Ayatollahs are on the run, and the generation that put them into power doesn’t have a ton of support from average Iranians.

Persia in the 1960s and 1970s was a rapidly developing and Westernizing country. It was the regional power, balancing the less Western-friendly Arab states. The women were treated with dignity and enjoyed the same freedoms as Western women–videos of Iranians living their daily life were not very dissimilar to those from a European Mediterranean city.

But the regime was toppled by Islamists who were very unhappy with the trend toward Westernization. An unholy alliance between communists and Islamists systematically undermined the regime, and when Jimmy Carter withdrew US support for the Shah due to his repression of the opposition, the regime fell.

The Shah was right and Carter was wrong. We have been in a low-medium level conflict with Iran for over four decades, and millions died in the Iran-Iraq war because of Carter’s foolishness. The Middle East was destabilized, and progress was set back decades.

From what we should damned well have learned about it by now, nation-building in places inhabited by hyper-aggressive 13th-century primordials whose pseudo-religion has inculcated in them an obsessive drive for world conquest is a mug’s game. At this point, all the optimism in the world isn’t going to suffice to make Iran an exception to the rule. Despite having been moving steadily and rapidly along for years and years in a much more felicitous direction, those halcyon days under the Shah are long gone now. The Mad Mullahs having beavered away in quite the opposite direction throughout their tenure, it ain’t likely they can ever be brought back.

As I have long maintained, Jimmeh Peanuthead has more to answer for than just about any other US President I can think of right offhand. By sitting back and more or less passively allowing the Shah to be deposed, he hung a burden around the neck of Western Civ that has weighed it down mightily ever since. Thus is it demonstrated yet again just where exactly the road paved with good intentions leads.

Updated update! Aesop helpfully points out a few interesting bits of operational arcana and backstage legerdemain I hadn’t thought of.

Iran has been the bleeding ass sore of the Middle East since 1979.

We should have been flying Arc Light rounders to their cities from Diego Garcia hourly for the last 50 years, but we’ve been too chickenshit to man up and do what’s both deserved, and long past necessary.

Israel lacked the ability to do what they did yesterday as anything but one-way suicide missions, until they were sold US KC-135 tanker aircraft during Obozo’s administration.

Israel can’t wait until after there’s a mushroom cloud overhead to act. It’s an existential luxury, and asinine to expect it of them. So Wikileaks should either STFU, or quit the charade by just putting on a pointed white hood, and get their true feelings out in the open.

They could be that stupid once, but to stay this stupid perpetually is the calculated and deliberate act of someone maliciously hoping they could see all of Israel smoked under a rain of nuclear destruction, partly as wishcasting, and secondarily as a shout out of affirmation to their fellow mouth-breathers worldwide.

Like the internet was short of that at any point since it started existing.

20-Dimensional chess move: while Trump’s hands are clean in Israel’s strike, one consequence of it now has Iran cutting off drone sales to Russia, because they need them to attack Israel. So in one move Israel has cut the Houthi terror pipeline, yet again severely crimped Iran’s nuclear ambitions (as if exploding nuclear scientists and Stuxnet viruses weren’t enough), and taken some heat off Ukraine – supposedly by accident.

That’s what diplomats and the E-ring at the Pentagon call a hat trick.

I repeat: interesting, veddy interesting, wouldn’t you say?

Update to the updated update! Okay, via Stephen, this is beginning to look seriouser and seriouser. In a manner of speaking.

President Donald Trump continues to state that the American military will not be joining the conflict, despite Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s requests to do so.

That said, Teddy Roosevelt famously advised “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” and, right now, Uncle Sam seems to be crafting a mighty big stick within striking distance of Iran:

• Item: There are now three aircraft carriers (two American, one British) taking positions within striking distance of Iran…
• Item: “A major military airlift appears to now be underway, as an unprecedented number of U.S. Air Force KC-135 and KC-46 Aerial-Refueling Tankers have departed from airbases across the United States and appear to be preparing to cross the Atlantic towards Europe.”
• Item: Multiple B-2s are already believe to be stationed at Diego Garcia, well within strike distance of Iran for the B-2 (though it might need refueling on the return trip).

Maybe all that movement is indeed just to give President Trump “options” should the Iranians try something crazy. But if I had to guess, it seems like the groundwork for some sort of planned operation is being laid.

It may be that President Trump thinks that the mullah’s current prostrate and distracted status may be the perfect time to settle the Houthi’s hash. Having already attacked American navy ships (absolute casus belli under international law), the time may be ripe to finally dismantle the Houthi threat.

Having for many years advocated loud and long for a once-and-for-all settling of jihadi hash, then turning on a dime to cheer Trump’s “no more endless foreign wars” campaign plank, I can’t honestly say I’m entirely comfortable objecting to these moves now. I’d make a piss-poor pacifist, I suppose.

Updates, forsooth! Francis’s take on the matter.

Israel is doing what it must, and here are the reasons.

A nation that possesses weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems that can wield them at long range acquires responsibilities along with those things. One of those responsibilities pertains to its rhetoric. Its rulers’ statements must be taken with full seriousness, especially their threats. Nation X must regard a threat from nation Y as equivalent to an actual attack. This was a component of American strategic doctrine for many decades.

The theocrats who rule Iran have said many times that, were Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and an appropriate delivery system, it would thereby acquire an obligation to use it against Israel as soon as possible. Israel’s government must assume that that statement is sincere. Though the phrase existential threat is used too loosely these days, it applies here.

Israel’s intelligence service is one of the best in the world. If Aman’s and Mossad’s analysts are convinced that Iran is on the brink of acquiring a nuclear weapon, the odds are overwhelming that it is so. In that case, Israel is compelled to act, as indeed it has.

Note that the actual identity of the threat-making nation is of little consequence. If any other nuclear power were to make such a threat, the gravity of it would be the same, though Israel’s response would surely vary according to the threat-maker’s location and capabilities. Threats to use weapons of mass destruction must always be treated as sincere.

As for the possible involvement of the United States, the matter is similar though not existential. Iran has threatened to strike American military assets in “retaliation” for Israel’s strikes against Iran. Ignore the lunacy of it. If it happens, America will be compelled to act, but until then, staying out of the conflict is the expected posture, and probably the best.

For all else, we must wait and see.

That’s about the size of it, yeah. Seems to me we’re pretty fortunate to have, in Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, an Israeli leadership intelligent enough, competent enough, awake enough to the threat Iran is to Western Civ entire that we can confidently back Bibi’s play here without suffering a lot of undue angst and/or agita over it.

Anybody old enough to remember this moldie oldie, from back in the bad old Hostage Crisis days?

Yeah, yeah, I know, not one of my all-time great embeds. But still.