Seven Reasons Not to Bomb Iran

The Middle East is a trap. Avoid.

By the time this piece publishes, the United States military might already have launched air strikes on Iran. Indeed, planes could be launching while I write this. Nevertheless, here is a list of seven reasons why our government should not intervene in the Middle East.

1) It has never gone well. That is unlikely to change now. In 1953, the CIA overthrew the elected government of Iran in order to help the British more easily extract oil. We then installed the Shah, whom lots of Persians didn’t like. That problem came to a head in 1979 with the Shah being deposed and the religious fundamentalists, led by the Ayatollah, coming to power. That was not a success story for the United States.

Then there are the horrific boondoggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, the lies that drew us into the First Gulf War (babies stabbed in incubators!), the Syrian civil war, the disastrous collapse of Libya after Obama’s airstrikes, the Arab Spring nonsense, and the intervention in Lebanon that led to 200 Marines getting killed. I could go on.

The American government has a long pattern of failure in the Middle East.

2) Iran is not a military threat to America. This will cause the DC establishment types to be upset, but it is true. Iran’s anger with America stems from the coup we staged there and the meddling in Iran’s near abroad. This relationship can be easily fixed by simply stopping our current policy of hostility to the regime in Iran and adopting a policy of simply ignoring the region.

This is the right policy towards Iran because the country is not a threat to us. Iran cannot militarily attack America. The Revolutionary Guard is not going to stage an amphibious landing on the Potomac. Iranian agents of subterfuge on American soil have been hapless fools, easily foiled.

Even if Iran develops nuclear weapons nothing changes. Iran cannot nuke America without getting obliterated in return. Therefore, there is no incentive to use those nuclear weapons in an offensive fashion.

Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, and China are all “bad” powers that have nuclear weapons. They’ve never used these weapons for a reason—the price isn’t worth the gain. Nukes are an ace in the hole for national defense but they don’t have offensive utility in a world of atomic parity.

3) Iran’s relationship to Israel is not our problem. Iran and Israel despise each other for reasons that are complex and not worth getting into here. Needless to say, this is not a problem for Americans. Lots of people on earth don’t like each other. This isn’t new. The best thing to do in these cases is to simply stay out. We ought not borrow trouble that has no bearing on our national interests.

Israel is a big boy country. The Israelis can solve their own problems. There is no need for the American taxpayer to be involved.

Much is made in mainstream circles of the anti-semitism of the Iranian regime with the implication being the Ayatollah will use nuclear weapons against Israel if he gets the bomb. This is fear mongering with no basis in reality. Israel, like America, has nuclear weapons. If Tel Aviv gets annihilated then so will Tehran. There is simply no gain for the Iranians in that case. Moreover, there is absolutely zero reason for the United States to get mixed up in a potential nuclear standoff between any countries anywhere on earth.

To be frank, the leadership of Iran is no more insane, moralistic, or fanatical than the Israeli or American ruling classes. In fact, they seem to be less expansionist than our own DC meddlers, mostly due to the aged character of the Iranian ruling element. The American military industrial complex is more ferocious about spreading gay sex, feminism, and “democracy” abroad than Iran is in spreading Shia Islam.

Nursing home government.

4) The Iranian struggle for freedom is not a concern of the American government. The Declaration of Independence says that the purpose of government is to secure the right “to life, liberty, and happiness” of the American people.

The Iranian people, however we may feel at a personal level about their cause, are not Americans. They don’t pay taxes, don’t owe us loyalty, haven’t consented to being ruled by us, and we have not agreed to rule over them in turn.

Their problems are their problems. The American government serves the American people. The Iranians are not Americans. They don’t get to ask American taxpayers to give them money, weapons, and support.

If Americans privately want to support women’s liberation or whatever in Iran they are welcome to do so, but that isn’t what tax money is for.

5) Tax money spent on bombing Iran would be more useful here at home. Let’s take a hard-headed view of the costs at stake here: every dollar we spend monkeying with the desert drama queens is a dollar we didn’t spend on something else here at home.

War does not “boost the economy” because all of the weapons used and all of the soldiers’ paychecks have to come from taxing production. Every soldier killed is a father, husband, brother, worker, businessman, and citizen whose future potential is lost forever. Everything in life comes with tradeoffs. War is no different.

Americans shouldn’t pay for weapons to be used on causes that don’t serve their interests. Our interest is protection. Our government is supposed to protect our bodies and our property. We have real problems with this right now here at home. Much more needs to be done to make American communities safe and peaceful.

I care far more about violence and criminal mischief in Hillsdale, Michigan than in Tehran. Lots of bad things happen every day all over the world. Our tax dollars should be used to solve problems here.

6) Intervention backfires. Wars for human rights and far flung geostrategic “interests” are always boondoggles. The long-term effects are bad: we stoke resentment among the natives, offend local power players, get sucked into unintelligibly complex region problems, and bear the long term costs of dealing with the fall out.

There is, thankfully, an easy way to avoid all these issues: just stay away. If individual Americans care about the Middle East then they can choose to spend their own money and time messing around in the region.

Surely, if Americans really thought bombing Iran was a good idea then they would be eagerly offering up money to mercenaries and resistance fighters to go in there and spread freedom. Since most Americans are not doing this willingly, why should they be forced to support these measures unwillingly with tax dollars? It doesn’t make sense.

7) The American government should adopt the golden rule out of self-interest. Americans would not like it if a foreign government decided to meddle in our internal affairs. If China or Russia announced that they were going to launch military operations against the American homeland because of police “brutality” waged by ICE against illegal migrants, there would be an enormous backlash. Even leftists might view this as going too far.

We expect other countries to mind their own business and to stay out of ours. We should do the same abroad. Our real interests are right here on our own soil.

Instead of going abroad in search of monsters to destroy, the American government should worry about problems here. The easiest way is to simply stay out of unnecessary conflicts. The opportunities for bringing problems abroad back home are simply too great. The Middle East is a mess and one the American government has done more, over its history, to create than to solve.

Time to take a step back.