What Victory Looks Like When Your Foe Won’t Surrender

Excerpt

The domestic debate around the meaning of what would constitute victory in the current military conflict with Iran is nearly as fierce as the fighting itself. Part of this stems from the personage of the commander in chief. For some, no war fought by Donald Trump could ever be won on satisfactory terms. This is the portion of the American electorate that has been reduced to rooting, if often only implicitly, for the clerical regime in Iran to prevail over the United States—alternately by tut-tutting at the increasingly complex nature of the geostrategic battle or by gloating at what they see as Trump’s lack of strategy. They simply want the president to lose.

But for those who can separate the man from the mission, an important question must be answered: What would victory over Iran look like?

Jonathan Schanzer is executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and contributing editor to Commentary.