This Was The Plan
The war in Iran isn’t a neocon detour. It’s the National Security Strategy in action.
I’m pleased to be making my debut in the online pages of Junto Magazine, a new publication for the American right. It is dedicated to advancing the movement through the new challenges of the modern day and engaging in the fierce, but necessary debates on our shared future. Definitely check out their site and subscribe; I’ll certainly be writing over there again.
This essay delves into a critical aspect of the current war on the Iranian regime: how it fits neatly within America’s interests and the Trump administration’s broader geopolitical strategy. Contra the right-wing foreign policy restrainers - if you’ve been around here a while, you’ll know my thoughts about that particular faction - the war on Iran is not a sop to Israel, antithetical to American interests, a betrayal of MAGA, a distraction from China, or completely out of left field. The destruction of the mullahcracy’s ability to threaten our friends and interests would deal a hammer blow to Beijing, allow Washington to finally prioritize the Indo-Pacific, and remove a dire threat to American security. And as for whether this was a repudiation of the president’s past beliefs, the answer can be found hiding in plain sight in the text of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released late last year.
Below is an excerpt, but you can read the whole thing at the Substack link.
Some of the president’s MAGA faithful, primarily those in the restrainer foreign policy camp, are unhappy with the administration’s kinetic action against Tehran. They believed that the 2024 Trump campaign promised “no new wars” and valued several of the president’s more restraint-minded Cabinet selections, including Vice President JD Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Restrainers were put in place throughout the secondary and tertiary levels of the defense bureaucracy, further assuring this faction that Trump was indeed one of them. Now that the president has launched military operations against Tehran, long seen as a pet project of the hated neoconservatives, this faction sees betrayal. Predictions of a new quagmire – yet another ‘forever war’ in the Middle East, sapping our attention from the crucial question of China – abound on social media, as do arguments that this war is not in American interests.
These objections do not survive contact with the administration’s own strategy document. Decisive action against Iran has been telegraphed by the president for years. Preventing the Islamic Republic from getting nuclear weapons has been one of Trump’s few consistent foreign policy ideas, going back even to his pre-political days. That goal alone justifies the current campaign; stopping an apocalyptic, millenarian regime that despises America from getting the most devastating weapons in mankind’s arsenal is directly within our core national interests. Add on top of that the regime’s rapid and sizable buildup of ballistic missiles, including attempts to produce or source intercontinental and hypersonic varieties, as well as its status as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism – killing over 1,000 Americans during its less than 50-year existence – and you have an airtight case for decisive action. Iran’s proxies have carried out attacks on American civilians and troops across the region and further afield, including in the United States itself. The regime has tried to assassinate several American government figures, even President Trump; that those plots were foiled does not make them any less dangerous. Iran has also operated within the Western Hemisphere more broadly, relying on anti-American regimes in Latin America for money laundering, smuggling operatives into the US under false passports, and building terror networks to threaten Washington closer to home.
Besides those very direct threats to our security, the mullahcracy is an integral part of the axis of enemies America faces in the 21st century. They are close military and economic partners with China and Russia, supplying the former with oil and the latter with drones that it uses against Ukraine on the battlefield. The sanctions evasion industry was essentially invented by Tehran and they have been undermining our economic penalties for decades, trading illicitly with our greatest foes and strengthening their ability to avoid one of America’s most powerful punitive tools. They trade intelligence, military technology, and key dual-use resources with these antagonistic actors, tying them ever-closer into a full-scale alliance structure. Eliminating the Iranian regime would deal a hammer blow to these more serious enemies, especially China, which is Tehran’s main customer for oil export. Cutting off Beijing’s ability to fuel its war machine with Iranian crude dramatically limits China’s scope of action and hampers its plans to eventually retake Taiwan by force. At the same time, removing the Iranian sanctions evasion nexus would allow any future penalties we apply to Beijing to be far more cutting and painful for the Chinese.
We do not defeat the enemy in Beijing simply by focusing myopically on Asia. The Chinese Communist Party is strengthened by the global network of bad actors that it heads; each lesser power in China’s orbit is useful as a force multiplier, a trading partner, and a distraction from what Beijing is trying to do: achieve regional, if not global, hegemony at the expense of the United States. The Venezuela operation and the current war against the Iranian regime must be viewed in that light to understand the White House’s broader rationale. In case of a major conflict with China, its allies in the Middle East, Latin America, and Eurasia will all be activated to diminish our ability to confront Chinese aggression directly and with undivided attention. Instead of surging our strength to the Indo-Pacific, Beijing wants us to be bogged down with various other conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and even our own backyard. Removing or cowing the regimes in Tehran and Caracas eliminates two of the CCP’s primary means of power projection. Paradoxically, going after these lesser regimes is perhaps the best way we can deter and degrade the capabilities of our greatest foe.
This approach is not a neoconservative or globalist one. It is grounded in concrete American interests, recognizes the world for what it is, and limits American intervention to what is needed to achieve our objectives. And all of it was laid out for the world to see in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, published last December. The same document that the restrainer right praised as a vindication of their worldview laid the groundwork for exactly this operation. In that influential planning document, the basis for the current intervention in Iran is described clearly and cogently.