Editorial Board
WSJ, June 19, 2025
“Another difference with Iraq is that Iran actually has an advanced nuclear program, far beyond any civilian purpose.”
The press is full of reporting on the “MAGA civil war” over Iran, but what’s notable is that the loudest isolationists appear to be losing the debate. It’s worth considering how they’ve misread the historical moment, the views of most Republicans, and above all President Trump.
Start with the threat and the mission. Like leftists after Vietnam, the new-right isolationists see every U.S. military intervention as a slippery slope to disaster. Instead of Vietnam Syndrome, they suffer from Iraq Syndrome: Every U.S. intervention will turn into a quagmire of “nation-building,” or even catastrophe.
“The first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans,” wrote Tucker Carlson on June 4. “It could also collapse our economy, as surging oil prices trigger unmanageable inflation. Consider the effects of $30 gasoline.” Citing Russia, China and the Brics bloc, he wrote, “an attack on Iran could very easily become a world war. We’d lose.”
It’ll be “another endless war,” warns Sen. Elizabeth Warren, illustrating that the podcaster right and progressive left increasingly agree on the virtue of American retreat.
Wars are unpredictable and always come with risks that must be contemplated. But so far Israel is winning this fight without regional, much less global, escalation. Iran has fired back at Israel, with decreasing missiles by the day, while Russia and China steer clear. “Military conflict is not a solution,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday.
The isolationists are unwilling to make distinctions and treat each intervention on its own terms. In Iran’s case, no one is talking about putting U.S. troops on the ground or a military occupation. Nor is anyone asking the U.S. to do the heavy lifting or take the biggest risk. “This is the dirty work that Israel does for all of us,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday.
The U.S. mission would be adding aerial firepower that Israel doesn’t have—and that America has resisted selling it—to destroy buried nuclear sites. The U.S. wouldn’t be starting a war but trying to finish it sooner by neutralizing a nuclear threat from a regime that chants “death to America.”
Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei resisted Mr. Trump’s terms on Wednesday and said “any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly cause irreparable harm to them.” This recycles his threat from before Israel’s attacks, but it isn’t clear he can make good on it. With depleted stocks of missiles and launchers, Iran is a far less credible opponent. Israel’s successes have strengthened the case for a U.S. strike. …SOURCE
***