As the U.S. and Israel seek to topple the jihadist regime, Iran has already blundered by attacking formerly neutral Gulf states.
The United States is at war with Iran, as Judd reports. President Trump ordered the invasion overnight, with no attempt to seek congressional authorization (nor any effort by the supine, Republican-controlled Congress to vindicate its war powers). As it goes with this administration, there was no Oval Office address or communication with the American people through government channels; rather, the president put out a video statement on social media in the wee hours of the morning.
While it is perilous for our governing framework and politically rash for the president to proceed this way, the blunt fact is that Iran has been at war with the United States throughout the near-half-century existence of the Shiite jihadist regime. As I’ve conceded, the president had adequate constitutional and statutory authority to order the ongoing attacks.
The military operations are being conducted jointly with our ally, Israel. Iran has already blundered: Its retaliatory strikes included attempted simultaneous strikes against Gulf and other Middle Eastern states that had sought to remain neutral — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan. These strikes caused no material damage — for the most part, the missiles were shot down; one civilian was killed in the UAE from falling debris. The effect, however, is to push the regimes in these countries into alliance with each other. The Saudis have already said as much, issuing a statement condemning Iran and “plac[ing] all its capabilities” at the disposal of the other Arab regimes that Tehran targeted. (Note: Iran has induced a rapprochement between the Saudis and Emiratis, who have been skirmishing though proxies in Sudan and elsewhere.) The Gulf alliance will have the effect of giving the U.S. and Israeli forces more operating room. (As observed by Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, one of our savviest Iran analysts, the public neutrality of the Sunni regime in Saudi Arabia has been in tension with its private sympathy for war against the Iranian regime.)
The objectives — at which we have to hypothesize because the president was derelict in his obligation to explain them — appear to be regime change (see Noah’s post this morning), coupled with determination to obliterate Iran’s defense and security forces, its air defenses, its nuclear program (to the extent there may have been efforts to rebuild it since June, as Noah addressed this week), its ballistic missile stockpiles and capabilities, and its capacity to direct jihadist militias (Hezbollah, the Houthis, the remnants of Hamas, Iran’s agents in Judea and Samaria, etc.).
Reports indicate that the IDF is taking the lead in annihilating the top tiers of the jihadist regime (including the “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) and that the American forces are destroying Iran’s defense infrastructure.