Which Faction Won?

I still think it’s probably too early to be too declarative about the effect of our strikes on the Iranian nuclear enrichment sites. And yet everyone has been declaring winners and losers in the game of influence over this administration.

The restrainer faction mostly opposed the strikes or wanted the U.S. to continue to play a supportive rather than co-belligerent role in Israel’s war. Reading between the lines, I think their opposition to a strike was wholly due to a fear that secondary or unknown consequences could draw the U.S. into a larger, costlier mission.

Another faction of Iran hawks wanted the strikes to be a decisive blow, but only if Israel couldn’t pull them off, and not if U.S. intervention was likely to turn into regime change. National Review‘s editorial struck a position like this one.

But there was yet a third faction: those who believed that Iranian nuclear ambitions can never be contained, nor America’s pivot to Asia completed, so long as the revolutionary regime in Tehran remains in power.

So far the proof is in the pudding. It’s not the restrainers who are upset about the president’s actions. It’s those who feel restrained.