The Trump administration can sit back and monitor Iran’s international ostracism and economic isolation while remaining unpredictable and enigmatic.
"President Trump recently ordered and then called off a retaliatory strike against Iran for destroying a U.S. surveillance drone. The U.S. asserts that the drone was operating in international airspace. Iran claims it was in Iranian airspace.
"Anti-war critics of Trump’s Jacksonian rhetoric turned on a dime to blast him as a weak, vacillating leader afraid to call Iran to account.
"Trump supporters countered that the president had shown Iran a final gesture of patience — and cleared the way for a stronger retaliation should Iran foolishly interpret his one-time forbearance as weakness to be exploited rather than as magnanimity to be reciprocated.
"The charge of Trump’s being an appeaser was strange coming from leftist critics, especially given Trump’s past readiness to bomb Syrian president Bashar alAssad for allegedly using chemical weapons, his willingness to destroy ISIS through enhanced air strikes, and his liberation of American forces in Afghanistan from prior confining rules of engagement.
"The truth is that Iran and the United States are now engaged in a great chess match. But the stakes are not those of intellectual gymnastics. The game is no game, but involves the lives, and possible deaths, of thousands." . . .
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