VIEW from behind the plow

Opponents of President Donald Trump, which includes the globalist-influenced national news media, use any excuse to lambaste the president. The excuse last weekend was a comment made by the president that Iran made a mistake in shooting down a U.S. surveillance drone in the Gulf of Hormuz. The left immediately jumped on the comment as an indication that Trump was going to take the U.S. into a war with Iran. These people will use any excuse to build up resentment against the president. It might help if the president didn’t make off-the-cuff remarks. But that’s beside the point. Saying the Iranians made a mistake is not a declaration of war. There are numerous options to retaliate for such offensive actions without endangering a whole population and without putting U.S. servicemen and women in harm’s way. A good rule of thumb is to take any national media accusations with a shaker full of salt – not just a “grain.” The elite media have become such an arm of the American left that they have lost their credibility. The Heritage Foundation provided a podcast on the situation in Iran with Heritage Foundation personnel Daniel Davis and Rachel del Guidice interviewing Thomas Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, providing balance to the affair. He is a former Army lieutenant general with specialized training in the area so he likely has more insight into the situation than most. Some important points addressed during the interview included the following: Davis: … (H)ow much do we know at this point about what happened with the drone shooting? Spoehr: We know a great deal. This type of air travel is recorded. It’s on radar, and so there’s a history of it. So, we know for a fact that the drone was operating in international airspace. … That means you’re 12 miles away from the shore of a nation, or something like that, so up and down, 12 miles away. In international airspace, operating at a fairly high altitude, a U.S. Navy drone was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. Then it fell and crashed into the Gulf of Oman. del Guidice: Tom, would you say that this incident was an act of war? Spoehr: … In history, an act of war is what a nation has perceived as an act of war. … You can stand down from what would seemingly be a very hostile act if two countries agree not to consider it an act of war. It’s an unmanned drone, so it’s not as provocative as, say, if somebody had lost their lives. … I don’t think we’re at a place yet where war is imminent. Davis: This comes just a week after the attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. It makes you wonder. What do you think could be motivating Iran to act so provocatively like this? Spoehr: … I don’t think anybody really knows what’s going through their heads when they do this because it’s commonly believed they’re making themselves look worse and worse as the day goes on. They’re operating under some fairly significant sanctions that the United States is leading. You could probably surmise they’d like to get out from under those sanctions. It’s hard to understand how attacking oil tankers, shooting down our drones, is going to relieve them of these sanctions. It’s also hard to understand how that will gain them any friends in the international community, especially if somebody gets hurt. del Guidice: Tom, why do you think that the president has been so cool so far on this issue? We’ve seen him be very strong on threats in the past, but not as much yet. Spoehr: The president at his core does not want to get us entangled in any overseas engagements more than he has to, more than absolutely required for the national security of the United States. So, he views this currently as a place where we can still pull back. We don’t have to engage in hostilities, and he believes this for a number of different reasons. One, obviously, he doesn’t want to put U.S. lives on the line unless there’s a vital U.S. national security interest. The second is these wars are costly and he’d like to reduce our overseas costs of defense operations. So, he’s got that. I also think he’s getting advice from a broad base of folks that say, “Hey, nothing has happened yet that we can’t stand down from.” Davis: How do you think Iran’s nuclear ambitions factor into their own thinking here? I saw a report, maybe you can verify this, that they’re about six months away from having a nuke? Would you say that that’s a reliable report?

Spoehr: … We have clear evidence that Iran for decades has been interested in pursuing a nuclear weapon.

It’s only in 2003 they put those plans aside for a little bit when they saw what happened in Iraq when the U.S. went in there. I think we think that sent them a message that might not be a good idea.

They’ve got this longstanding desire to have a nuclear weapon. … I think the current tensions we’re seeing are probably more about trying to get … sanctions relief than to restart their nuclear program.

As you suggest, they’ve made hints that they’re starting to refine uranium again, trying to bring it up more than there is allowed by the agreement and in greater percentages of purity. I don’t think we should make much of that. That’s really just posturing, I think.

del Guidice: Leaders of both the United States and Iran have said that they don’t want war, and yet we seem to be inching closer and closer to it. What would war with Iran look like?

Spoehr: I don’t even know that we know what it would look like. I think probably it would be a series of smaller type operations.

I don’t think there’s anybody that thinks that we would go in and try and change the regime in Iran. I don’t think that’s a good course of action.

But assuming that this escalates, I think you would see, if the president decided it was necessary, some sort of retaliation and it would probably be proportional and very limited.

For example, in the case of this drone strike, it wouldn’t be too unreasonable to see us attacking the same launchers that launched the missile that brought down the drone.

The same thing with the tanker attacks. Let’s say that happens again. Maybe the United States, or with its partners, would choose to attack the naval ships and the bases from which these attacks originated.

That’s the type of thinking typically you see when we’re trying to keep things at a lower level.

Davis: Would you expect that gas oil prices will rise out of this? I know there’s so much oil that comes right through this strait. Do you expect there to be an economic impact of this?

Spoehr: Yeah, there is an economic impact. I don’t know what a barrel of crude is at today. I was hearing it was a couple of dollars up.

I also saw people talking about if this had happened five or 10 years ago, the price of oil would have got up $20, $30 a barrel.

Because there are so many other sources now in the world for oil, including the United States, we’re much less dependent on getting oil through the Straits of Hormuz.

Most of Asia still gets a lot of oil through the Straits of Hormuz. The Western nations really not as much anymore. So I think unless the straits completely close, we’re not going to see oil go through the roof.

Davis: Just to go back here, you mentioned a proportional strike in response. Do you see that escalating further, Iran being emboldened by that to lash out again, or do you think at some point they would back off and realize, “OK, we don’t want this”?

Spoehr: … You try and keep it limited. You try and signal that, “Hey, … we’re not trying to damage the regime, we’re not trying to take out your leaders, we are trying to make you stop and we’re trying to take out the tools from which you are launching these attacks.”

You always hope that this stops at the lowest level possible.

We saw that when President Trump decided to retaliate against Syria for using chemical weapons. He very specifically went after the facilities and the aircraft that they were using to deliver the chemical weapons. Didn’t go to Damascus, didn’t go anywhere else outside those parameters.