A few days ago forces from the United States and Israel attack targets in Iran. Leaders of both nations defend their decision by claiming self defense: they say Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program that endangers other nations. The US and Israel also claim that this operation will likely take 4 to 5 weeks but we have the capacity for a longer war. There are several problems, so let me start here:

Wars are always supposed to be quick. At the beginning of Civil War (1861-1865) the South believed that Northern States wouldn’t fight to keep the nation together. They felt that as the states voluntarily joined the Union they could voluntarily leave. Meanwhile the Northern States believed the South didn’t have the infrastructure (railroad connections, guns, bullets, etc.) and would run out of stuff in a few months. They were both wrong. Perhaps a better example is the 2003 invasion of Iraq. When President Bush announced the invasion members of his administration claimed it would be a cakewalk and it would be financed by Iraqi oil. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed the Iraqi people would see us as liberators. By the time our troops left in 2011 (with over 4000 US casualties) Iraq was still a mess.

Trump promised not to do this. He famously ran on a platform of not entering “forever wars”. This will end up costing him among his base.

Iran isn’t an immediate threat. Last June Trump ordered an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and claimed that we “obliterated them.” He famously never admits a mistake and therefore can’t now claim it didn’t work. There’s no possibility that Iran has been able to rebuild its program fast enough to make it a threat now.

I’ll certainly be writing more about this later but when gas prices start to rise and the stock market declines it’s going to be hard for Trump to continue to claim victory.