U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters onboard Air Force One en route to the NATO summit in The Hague on Tuesday.Brian Snyder/Reuters
The decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to join in Israel’s war against Iran and bomb three Iranian nuclear facilities on Sunday was shocking, and not just for the audacity of the attack.
What is in fact most breathtaking about the operation is that, in spite of Mr. Trump’s usual lack of forethought, it could prove to have been effective in its stated goal of bringing an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
It’s too early to be certain about that, of course. But the mere thought of it is a test of the synaptic functions of the rational brain: Could the chaotic, egomaniacal and dangerously fickle Mr. Trump actually turn out to be the U.S. president who brings the terror-sponsoring Iran government to heel and makes the world a safer place?
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever put the dilemma well. “In a rules-based world, you just don’t start bombing other people,” he said Monday. “Having said that, Iran is an evil regime.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte seemed to emphasize that point when he said the U.S. airstrikes were not a violation of international law on the straightforward grounds that Iran can never be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
And that is the crux of the matter. Iran is a genocidal, despotic theocracy that kidnaps, tortures and kills its own citizens. It is bent on destabilizing the West and the Mideast. It arms Russia with kamikaze drones that are used against Ukraine’s civilian population, it materially supports terrorist groups such as the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas, and its stated goal is to wipe Israel off the map.
Analysis: U.S. bombing raid on Iran raises countless questions despite apparent ceasefire
In 2020, its forces mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane taking off from Tehran, killing 176 people, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.
Any failure to keep nukes out of the hands of such a regime is too dark to contemplate. And yet Iran was well on its way to that goal. It was believed to possess more than 400 kilograms of 60-per-cent enriched uranium before the U.S. attack – enough to fuel 10 bombs if enriched to 90 per cent.
Uranium enriched to 60 per cent has no civilian use. Its only possible purpose can be to further enrich a portion of it for the rapid creation of a single bomb – something that can be done in two weeks with the right centrifuge.
It will take time for experts to establish just what remains of Iran’s bomb-building infrastructure. This will be key to determining whether Mr. Trump was just his usual bloviating self when he claimed the bombings “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear-arms capacity.
In the short term, though. Mr. Trump appears to have prompted Israel and Iran to agree to a ceasefire (albeit a shaky one in its early hours), something the world is welcoming.
“If this ceasefire succeeds after the decisive U.S. military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, it will be a very positive development,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X.
That’s what the world has to hope for: that Mr. Trump’s attack on Iran will prove to be effective in the long run.
If it is, he will have done the world a favour and demonstrated the importance of America’s role as international policeman – which is odd, because Mr. Trump has been noisily moving the U.S. away from that since taking office.
It is not at all unreasonable or ungrateful for anyone to assume that the President didn’t think things through to the end, and that he doesn’t have a long-range strategy in mind.
Mr. Trump is impulsive and consumed with keeping his name at the centre of events. More often that not, he has to reverse himself on big decisions (while making it look like he knew what he was doing all along, of course).
Thanks to the fact Mr. Trump signaled the bombs might be coming in his interminable social-media postings last week, there is a reasonable chance Iran was able to move some of its enriched uranium to a safe location in time.
No one knows that for sure yet. Or whether Iran only has agreed to a ceasefire in order to buy time and get its nuclear production back online.
Nor can anyone be sure that Mr. Trump will see this fight through to the end, or whether he will lose interest if he is not adequately praised for his actions.
Does anyone want to entrust nuclear diplomacy to Donald J. Trump? Not at all. But for the moment he has thrust himself into that role. As hard as it might be for some to swallow, it is in the world’s interest to see him succeed.