September 11, 2025 | The Wall Street Journal
Wasn’t Hell Supposed to Break Loose if the U.S. Struck Iran?
‘We can’t do this,’ Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said. Years later, Trump did it.
September 11, 2025 | The Wall Street Journal
Wasn’t Hell Supposed to Break Loose if the U.S. Struck Iran?
‘We can’t do this,’ Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said. Years later, Trump did it.
Excerpt
Wars always upend assumptions. In 1983 the Islamic Republic of Iran instructed Hezbollah terrorists to “take spectacular action against the United States Marines,” according to American military officials. Hezbollah did so a few weeks later by bombing the U.S. Embassy and Marines in Beirut. Since then, American officials and political commentators of both parties have averred that a U.S. attack on Iran would provoke a forever war in the Middle East.
Even as the theocracy’s popularity among the Iranian populace tanked in the 1990s and 2000s, American officials saw any foreign intrusion as a gift to the regime, sure to revive its domestic fortunes. They assumed that the Iranian people, under threat, would set aside their grievances and tolerate, if not embrace, their Islamist overlords.
Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.