Opinion | ‘A Cocked Pistol Aimed at Iran’

The analogy I’ve used is it’s this cocked pistol. You’ve moved in enough forces. You’ve put them in a posture that is extraordinarily aggressive. It’s like a cocked pistol aimed at Iran. And the other thing that I would say about this is there’s another factor hovering over in the background here. And that other factor is that I think Donald Trump feels like he has a really good track record at dealing with Iran aggressively. He just went through the Venezuela raid, which was, from a purely military perspective, swooping in with Special Forces, spiriting out the leader of a country without widespread death and destruction, was a remarkable military feat. And this is also a time when you should be very alarmed and aware that that’s exactly when the temptation to reach too far locks in, because one of the records of American military engagements prior to when both Afghanistan and Iraq began to bog down is we had been through a long run of very successful military engagements, from Desert Storm to the interventions in the Balkan states, and then it got a lot more difficult. And then it got a lot more costly. And I’m not quite sure the administration has counted that cost, in part because of some of its recent successes. And where Trump feels that this is where he has his most autonomy, the most power that he can immediately exercise, the most confidence in the outcome. And that all adds up to, it’s starting to feel, I’m not going to say inevitable, but it’s starting to feel imminent.