Both Trump and progressives are foggy on Iran  

The fog of war seems to have enveloped President Trump and his minions. After two weeks of armed conflict with Iran, they have yet to offer a lucid and realistic explanation of America’s war aims.

The White House’s failure to dispatch top officials to last Sunday’s talk shows to drum up public support for the war was telling. Apparently, none could be trusted to speak for a president who himself lurches incoherently from one rationale to another. 

Meanwhile, political battle lines have hardened at home. Republican lawmakers rubber stamp whatever Trump wants, while Democrats demand a halt to hostilities, pending a vote on a war powers resolution.

With American forces engaged in combat, this isn’t the best moment for a polarizing domestic fight over constitutional prerogatives. But Democrats are right to insist that the president bring his case for war before Congress for hearings, questions and debate.

Trump’s lack of strategic clarity is self-defeating; it weakens domestic and international support for the U.S. showdown with Iran. The confusion began when he threatened the regime with air strikes if it didn’t stop killing anti-government protesters en masse.

Then, announcing the Feb. 28 attacks, Trump dropped the humanitarian guise and claimed that an Iranian attack was “imminent.” That didn’t make sense, since Tehran and Washington were engaging in talks about Iran’s nuclear program. The decision to stop jawing and go to war was entirely his.

Next, the president proclaimed regime change as his goal. “All I want is freedom for the people,” he told reporters.  

Trump’s attempt to cast himself as a liberator was shockingly off-brand and provoked howls in MAGA land. “America First” acolytes noted that he sounded just like President George W. Bush and the neocons he’s often berated for embroiling America in “endless wars.”  

Late last week, Trump shifted gears yet again, demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” This is sheer fantasy. Shia clerics maintain an iron grip on Iran with a multilayered security apparatus that includes the sinister Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, the Basij militia which monitors protests and dissidents, the police and the armed forces.

Decapitation — killing regime leaders — won’t topple this elaborate edifice of oppression. The mullahs defied Trump this week by naming Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the first wave of U.S. and Israeli strikes.   

But in responding to this erratic and exasperating performance, Democrats shouldn’t let antipathy toward Trump blind them to the strategic and moral necessity of defanging the Islamic Republic.

The religious fanatics who have hijacked the ancient and proud land of Iran have turned it into a malignant fount of extremism and bigotry, dedicated to fomenting war in the Middle East and terrorism around the world. 

Since seizing power 47 years ago, Iran’s clerical rulers have used their country’s oil riches not to raise Iranians’ living standards — which are abysmal — but to arm a regional network of Islamist terror groups, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Yemen’s Houthis, and Shia militias in Iraq.

They spread Islamist fundamentalism and wage an unrelenting proxy war against Israel, in hopes that the U.S. will tire of defending its ally and retreat from the Middle East.  

While many on the progressive left love to villainize Israel, Iran is the main catalyst of the region’s chronic instability and convulsive violence. Its neighbors recognize this, which is why none come to its defense. In fact, Iran has deepened its isolation by attacking 14 nearby countries in retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli attacks.

Lest they appear naïve, Democrats should challenge progressive rhetoric that casts Iran as the innocent victim of U.S. bullying and imperialism. Typical was New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who railed against a “catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression.”

United Nations officials and some European leaders also accuse the U.S. of violating international law. Such punctilious legalism masks a disturbing tendency toward moral equivocation.

Tehran conspires incessantly to subvert and intimidate its neighbors. It massacres protesters, deploys “morality police” to suppress women’s liberties and murders Jews and regime critics abroad.

If international law shields odious tyrannies like Iran’s from legal and moral accountability for their crimes — while tying the hands of free societies that act to defend themselves and uphold human rights — then Americans across the political spectrum should be calling for new laws.

Democrats need to forge a tough-minded alternative for dealing with an implacably hostile Islamic Republic. It would focus on containing and deterring Tehran’s drive to destabilize and dominate the region, while leaving regime change to the Iranian people. 

No president should ever take America to war on a whim. And no party with serious governing ambitions should let Americans doubt its resolve to confront a dangerous foe like today’s Iran.  

Will Marshall is founder and president of Progressive Policy Institute.