America Must Not Get Dragged Into a War With Iran

Opinion|America Must Not Get Dragged Into a War With Iran

The United States is alarmingly close to getting dragged into yet another military entanglement in the Middle East, this time by Israel — which is looking less and less like a true friend.

Israel’s surprise attack on Iran on Friday has almost certainly blown up any chance of reaching the nuclear deal the United States was pursuing for months. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has also recklessly endangered the 40,000 U.S. troops deployed in the region, putting them at immediate risk of Iranian retaliation, which could draw America into a war with Iran.

However Iran interprets our role in the attacks, Israel appears to have acted without giving the United States enough warning to take adequate precautions. Though President Trump acknowledged on Thursday that an Israeli attack might be imminent, the United States only began voluntary evacuations of military families and nonessential embassy personnel on Wednesday afternoon, while the State Department began drawing up plans for mass evacuation of U.S. citizens mere hours before the attack.

Mr. Trump, and all Americans, should be furious. Now Mr. Netanyahu and hawkish voices in the United States will almost certainly put pressure on Mr. Trump to assist Israel in destroying Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, something that will be difficult for the Israeli military to do on its own and that even the U.S. military might be unable to accomplish. It would be the worst mistake of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

A war with Iran would be a catastrophe, the culminating failure of decades of regional overreach by the United States and exactly the sort of policy that Mr. Trump has long railed against. The United States would gain nothing from fighting a weak country halfway around the globe that causes problems in its region but does not pose a critical security threat to us. And the United States would lose much: most tragically, the lives of U.S. service members, along with any chance of escaping our tortured past in the region.

Americans of all political stripes oppose war with Iran, presumably because they understand the two big lessons from U.S. experiences fighting in the Middle East over the past 25 years. Not only do preventive wars not work; they also have unintended consequences with lasting impact on America’s national security.