Jonathan S. Tobin
Critics assert that the price America is paying to force the Islamic Republic to give up its nuclear ambitions and zeal for terrorism is too high. But the alternatives are far worse.
A large billboard on Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv reading “We will get through it togethern” during the joint U.S.-Israel military operations against Iran, March 16, 2026. Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90.
Two weeks after the start of the U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran, naysayers about the wisdom of the operation remain pervasive and loud. The arguments against the war are based on a variety of concerns. The motivations of many of those denouncing the decisions of President Donald Trump are clearly partisan, ideological, and, in the case of a considerable percentage of those on the far right and left, connected to prejudice.
Regardless of the validity of those complaints—and many, if not most, deserve to be dismissed—there is no avoiding the main question to be answered about such a conflict. Is it worth the cost in blood, money and political capital, both at home and abroad, that the administration is expending on a fight with no definite endpoint in sight?
And to that question, there are no easy answers. There is good reason to worry about whether the unintended negative consequences of the war will, in the long run, be viewed as more significant than the issues policymakers are currently obsessing about.
Kicking the can down the road
Nevertheless, even the most reasonable skeptics of the effort, not to mention the deafening chorus of those partisans and ideologues predicting doom for Trump’s war plans, are largely failing to address another equally important question that must be answered. Is the cost of allowing the pre-war status quo to continue higher than those associated with the uncertainties of war?
Iran was steadily rebuilding its nuclear program with an imminent option to race to a bomb, expanding missile production and continuing to orchestrate an “axis of resistance” dedicated to fomenting chaos and war. That’s more than enough to justify the risks of potential disaster that are an inevitable part of all wars.
Like the question about the cost of war, the answer will only be clear after the fact. Yet even now, with the outcome of the campaign still somewhat in doubt, it’s obvious that continuing a policy of kicking the can down the road that Trump’s predecessors chose—either out of bad judgment, an unjustifiable sympathy for Tehran, cowardice or just plain apathy—would have been as colossal a mistake as even the costliest military blunder.
The dangers that lie ahead are not limited to the short-term question of whether Washington and Jerusalem will achieve their objectives, which are aligned with each other but not identical.
The first purpose of the campaign is the eradication of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, in addition to its support and active participation in international terrorism. Washington and Jerusalem are committed to those objectives, which they rightly see as not only crucial to their own countries but integral to the security of the West as a whole. Those are widely seen as achievable goals to one degree or another.
Both governments have also stated that they favor regime change in Iran. That’s something Israel believes is absolutely necessary to achieve. The Trump administration would like it to happen, but could live without it, as long as the ayatollahs were stripped of their nukes and missiles, and had their terrorist option foreclosed.
It’s far from clear whether the goal of toppling the Islamist government in Tehran can or will be accomplished. If a successful domestic uprising doesn’t happen, both countries are wisely reluctant to commit to a ground incursion on the scale required to install a new government.
Economic and strategic problems
Still, the problems that are being generated by the war don’t only involve Iran retaining nuclear capability or whether the theocrats can cling to power. Just as important is whether the economic consequences of the war or its impact on equally important strategic problems faced elsewhere by the West will wind up overshadowing what happens in the Persian Gulf or the Middle East.
With respect to economics, it’s obvious that Trump and his team—contrary to the false narratives about the war being impulsively decided on a presidential whim or as the result of sinister Israeli or Jewish pressure—were fully cognizant of the implications of combat in the region on the price of oil. That Iran might seek to stop its flow through the Strait of Hormuz was always a likely possibility. And it was a given that the price of oil, and consequently, the price of gas at the pump in the United States, would go up once the war started.
A long-term jump in oil prices would harm the global economy, set back Trump’s objectives for American prosperity, and impact domestic politics and his party’s chances of retaining control of Congress in the midterm elections this fall. You don’t have to be an isolationist who opposes any foreign interventions to understand that any one of those things might be considered a good enough reason for an American president to hold off on efforts against Iran.
The China factor
Added to that is the impact of the conflict on the international stage, where the United States is—whether many Americans fully understand it or not—locked in a geostrategic rivalry/conflict with Iran’s allies: Russia, and even more importantly, China. As historian Niall Ferguson, who supports action against Iran, has pointed out, this war must be seen in the context of a second Cold War in which the United States is facing off against what may prove to be a Chinese opponent that’s far more formidable than the Soviet Union was in the first such conflict in the 20th century.
Removing the Iranian threat is a blow to China in terms of its strategic quest to dominate the globe and because it is an important source of oil to Beijing. But should the United States be embroiled in an unsuccessful war in the Middle East, this would help the Chinese elsewhere. And Russia is benefiting from the way the current war is increasing its oil and gas revenue, and serves as a distraction from its stalemated efforts to wear down Ukraine in that four-year-old war.
As Ferguson writes this week in The Free Press, blocking the Strait of Hormuz for any appreciable period of time would be a disaster for Washington, as well as something that could set an unfortunate precedent for the ability of China and its allies to do the same thing in other important choke points, such as the Strait of Taiwan. It almost goes without saying that, as the analyst argues, “the longer the war lasts, the greater the domestic pressure on Trump; the heavier the costs for U.S. allies in Asia and Europe; the more money for Russia; and the greater the temptation for China.”
Those risks are real. But to assume the sort of military failure or stalemate in Iran, as most of Trump’s critics do, that would generate that sort of scenario in which China profits from the war is not persuasive.
While the success of the U.S.-Israeli offensive won’t be able to fully evaluated until after the conflict is over, it’s clear that both militaries have not been thwarted during the first two weeks of the joint campaign. To the contrary, they have systematically eliminated Iran’s military capabilities, hunted down its missile-launchers and done more damage to its nuclear program.
The fact that a country as large as Iran is not completely defeated in two weeks is not a reason to believe the war has so far been a failure. If the armed forces of the two allies are allowed to continue their military efforts, the already devastating results for Iran will likely become even more impressive. It could possibly go a long way toward rendering the regime harmless to its neighbors and/or unable to resist the desire of its population for a new government. There is no reason to believe that the war is already a “quagmire,” other than the wish on the part of Trump’s opponents that this is what it will turn out to be.
Even if the results are not everything the two governments would wish for, the arguments that say the United States would have been better off delaying action or even appeasing Iran, as the Obama and Biden administrations did, ring false.
Partisan folly
The policy of enriching and empowering Tehran that was the consequence of former President Barack Obama’s signature foreign-policy achievement—the 2015 nuclear deal—was disastrous for the Middle East and for America. It led to a stronger and more aggressive Islamist regime. It encouraged its adventurism, hegemonic ambitions and willingness to start wars against Israel from Gaza and Lebanon via its terrorist proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the way its Houthi allies in Yemen sought to interdict international shipping in the Horn of Africa.
More than that, letting Iran get a nuclear weapon, as Obama’s pact guaranteed, or race to one, as became an increasingly likely scenario in the last year, would have done far more damage to U.S. interests than even a permanent hike in gas prices or an emboldened Beijing. Economic and strategic thinkers are right to ponder what may follow the current campaign, and whether some or all of the fallout from it will be problematic or wind up working out in ways that we cannot foresee. But letting a tyrannical regime ruled by religious fanatics bent on imposing their version of fanatical Islam on the Middle East and the rest of the world get a nuclear weapon to blackmail and intimidate opponents would be a nightmare.
And that would have been the inevitable result if the United States hadn’t prepared to act at some point in the near future. While Washington could have waited until the threat was so imminent that averting it would have been as catastrophic as waiting for it to happen, Trump wisely decided that forestalling that scenario was worth the risk.
While the calculus involved in determining that acting in 2026 was far less costly and dangerous than waiting until some point in the future, what cannot be debated is that stopping Iran was in almost everyone’s interests. To treat the need to stop the apocalyptic implications of an Iranian bomb as somehow less important than short-term increases in the price of fuel or theoretical advantages that might fall to Beijing is like comparing fatal cancer to a broken limb. The latter is painful and can impair one’s lifestyle. The former is to envision a chronic global catastrophe carried out by theocrats with no compunction about slaughtering innocents.
The failure to acknowledge this basic premise is what makes so much of the criticism of the administration unpersuasive.
And that brings us back to the motivations of the critics. As was apparent from the first days of the war, most of those opposing Trump on Iran are doing so for partisan reasons.
While polls show that a majority of Americans oppose the war, those who drill down into public opinion on the issue also show that far larger majorities agree with Trump on the nature of the threat from Iran and the necessity to deal with it. However, when simply asked about whether they favor the president’s policies, their replies are in keeping with the hyper-partisan nature of contemporary American society.
Democrats are united against the president’s decision to an extent unprecedented in the history of opposition parties at a time of war. Having committed themselves to a view of Trump as a complete villain (and a fascist authoritarian at that), few among his foes seem willing, as previous generations of Americans had done, to let politics stop at the water’s edge, even when vital American interests are at stake.
As veteran Democratic lawyer David Boies wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal, every previous president of the last quarter-century agreed that Iran posed a threat that needed to be addressed. Yet virtually the entire Democratic Party has been opposed to acting on that imperative, and they’re not doing so because they are worried about oil prices or thinking China might find a way to gain from it. The only reason for their opposition is that Trump is doing it.
The other reason for opposing action against Iran is, if possible, even more contemptible.
An argument rooted in hate
For many on the left and on the noisy yet less numerous far right, the reason not to stop the mullahs is that doing so might help Israel in the process.
As sober analysts, as well as Trump and his team, have pointed out, the Jewish state and its leaders didn’t strong-arm or even really persuade the United States to do something that was just as much an American imperative as an Israeli one.
The fact that since the Iranian Revolution of 1970, the Islamic Republic has sought the elimination of the one Jewish state on the planet—the “Little Satan” and the “Great Satan” of the United States—was an argument against restraining them for those ideologues on the left and the right who sympathize with that goal.
The antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories that have been floated in recent months and weeks about Israeli and Jewish influence over American policy weren’t so much based on false conceptions about U.S. interests as it was in hostility to the safety or existence of Jews. That those, like podcaster Tucker Carlson, who traffic in Jew-hatred, didn’t want Washington to act with Jerusalem to prevent the genocide of its population, even if it also meant buttressing American security, isn’t surprising. But as Carlson’s confession about his communications with the Islamist regime in the run-up to the war makes clear, the loyalty of extremists who hate Israel and Jews is more with those who share their vile beliefs than it is to the United States, let alone Trump.
Americans can and should be conducting a conversation about the cost/benefits of the war. Given the uncertainty involved in any military conflict, there is always the possibility that the fight will lead to results that will ultimately determine that the risk wasn’t worth it.
Yet alongside that discussion must be one about the costs of letting Iran go on seeking, and ultimately acquiring, the nukes and missiles that would transform the world for the worse. Preventing a terrorist Islamist regime from gaining such power will always be a higher priority than even sensible efforts to keep oil prices down or conserve U.S. resources just to be able to deal with other threats posed by China and Russia.
Instead, all we’re hearing from Trump’s opponents is partisan bile or antisemitic invective. That is not a debate that has anything to do with American interests or costs; it’s an irresponsible and hateful agenda that deserves no respect.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.
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