The president says the U.S. will retaliate. When and how extensively remain to be seen as Iran continues to defy the Trump-ordered ‘ceasefire.’
President Trump announced — on Truth Social, of course — that Iran shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter flying near the Strait of Hormuz.
No American personnel were killed. The president confirmed that two pilots were involved. Reportedly, they ejected from the helicopter and were in the water for a couple of hours. The Wall Street Journal reports that this set off a race to rescue them before Iran could capture them — the fear of hostage taking, along with fear of casualties, has been among the factors paralyzing the commander in chief from taking forcible action against Iran (whose civilization he previously vowed to wipe from the face of the earth), even as Iran has persisted in violent attacks against American forces and allies during the so-called cease-fire. U.S. forces rescued the pilots using a drone boat, which military sources told the Journal was “a first of its kind” operation at sea.
The president asserted that “the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”
Well, sure, but Iran’s de facto closure of the strait (or, at least, slowing of traffic to a trickle, with the proviso that it can halt the traffic at any time) is itself an act of war patently directed at the United States — but one the president has resisted “of necessity, responding to.”
To recap, the strait was open when Trump chose to start combat operations without public support or congressional authorization, without clarity about the objectives, and with reckless assumptions that Iran would rapidly surrender rather than close the strait and attack regional U.S. bases and allies — notwithstanding that the armed forces and intelligence agencies warned the president that these were very real possibilities. Now, the strait is closed with the prospect that Iran will toll it going forward — a prospect that would inspire other rogue governments to toll other trade routes and erode freedom of the seas, heretofore a vital American interest, key to American prosperity.
Trump got us to this point, and the choice is now stark: combat operations to defeat the regime at least to the point of forfeiting its rogue claim to control the strait, or withdrawal of our forces with the strait under Iranian control. The latter would mark a humiliating American defeat. Despite the significant damage done to Iran’s regime and its capacity to project power by American and Israeli forces during the last year, a withdrawal with Iran asserting dominion and control over a vital international waterway would reverse the deterrence of Iran that Trump had reestablished through Operations Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury.
To echo Noah’s excellent column, the enemy here is Iran, not Israel – and the “Death to America” regime is our enemy first and foremost, despite its virulent Jew hatred. The lengths to which anti-Israel factions are going to portray Israel as the culprit are remarkable. In its report on the shooting down of the American military aircraft over the strait that America is endeavoring to reopen, the New York Times relates that Israel’s military has been striking Hezbollah in Lebanon, which “prompted Iranian retaliation and waves of tit-for-tat strikes” that led inexorably to the shooting down of the Apache. That is, we are to understand that Israel, by its response to serial bombings of its territory by Hezbollah (a proxy from whose operations Iran sometimes pretends to be uninvolved), naturally caused Iran to attack an American target over the Strait of Hormuz 1,200 miles away.
Right.
Israel did not get the United States into this fix; Iran, our implacable enemy of 47 years, did. And Israel cannot get us out of it.