The reason a state goes to war — its casus belli — is an essential component of its campaign. Wars with a strong casus belli, such as the Civil War and World War II, are usually more popular and consistently more victorious than those with weak justifications — Vietnam, for example, and Iraq. The Trump administration’s reasons for mounting Operation Epic Fury are being attacked by both the isolationist right and the progressive left in the United States. The war in Iran, they claim, is unnecessary, unwarranted and even illegal. It serves Israel’s interests more than America’s, some say. Refuting those arguments, then, will be crucial to the operation’s success.
Criticism of the war falls into three categories. The first assails the war’s objectives. While admitting that the Iranian regime is heinous and ideally should be overthrown, detractors insist that the Islamic Republic never truly threatened America. By Trump’s own admission, they recall, Iran’s major nuclear facilities were obliterated last summer, while its ballistic missiles cannot yet reach Europe, much less the United States. By comparison, North Korea poses a much greater danger to the United States, yet no one is advocating bombing Pyongyang. And though administration officials have occasionally cited regime change as Epic Fury’s preferred outcome, no regime has ever been brought down by air power alone.
Strategically, the war will deplete American arsenals, critics warn, and embolden Russia to redouble its aggression against Ukraine and enable China to attack Taiwan. The White House has never clearly identified the war’s objectives, opponents claim, or formulated a day-after plan. As such, the war could result in the emergence of an even more radical leadership in Iran. The Middle East, meanwhile, will be destabilized.
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Finally, on a legal level, by not seeking Congressional approval for the war, the White House is acting unconstitutionally–so the critics charge. Some go further by maintaining that the attack on Iran is criminal. “A preventive strike, in which the powerful hit the weaker state,” wrote The New York Times’s David Sanger, “is considered illegal.”
While seemingly compelling, none of these arguments can withstand serious scrutiny. No, Iran does not present an imminent threat to America’s security, no more than Nazi Germany did to Britain’s in the 1930s. But, as Churchill foresaw, if left unchecked, Germany’s rapid military buildup would soon endanger Britain, as, in fact, it did. In this sense, North Korea represents the perfect cautionary example. Would the war critics prefer the United States wait until Iran had the bomb as well as the long-range missiles capable of reaching American targets? For that reason, precisely, nobody is recommending attacking Pyongyang. And while North Korea’s organizing principle is regime survival and food to feed its starving population, Iran’s is regional and ultimately global domination. The North Korean threat to America pales beside that of a nuclear-armed and ballistically-enabled Iran.
True, no regime has ever been brought down by air power, but a sustained bombing campaign by jets and sea-to-ground missiles can severely degrade the Iranian government and facilitate a successful popular uprising. Such an approach worked outstandingly well in Serbia, where, in 1999, American and allied aerial bombardments forced the withdrawal of Slobodan Milošević’s forces from Kosovo and directly contributed to his government’s collapse the following year.
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Rather than emptying America’s arsenals, the war is already speeding up America’s production of a wide range of ordnance, especially anti-missile interceptors. And instead of being encouraged by the U.S. military’s expenditure of munitions, Russia and China will likely be deterred by the display of American proficiency and resolve. After depriving China of its rich source of energy from Venezuela, Trump could also deny China its vital flow of Iranian oil.
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War, according to the military philosopher Carl Von Clausewitz, is always defined by uncertainty. The administration could surely have done a better job of clarifying its goals before launching its attack, but determining its exact outcome at this stage in the campaign is meaningless. Suffice it to say, as the White House already has, that the military action can help create the conditions under which the Iranian people can reclaim their liberty. Short of that, Operation Epic Fury aims to eliminate the gravest Iranian threats, present and future. And as for the destabilization of the Middle East — the most ludicrous of the critics’ claims — Iran has been the primary source of violence in the region for almost half a century. Neutralizing that source will open game-changing opportunities for achieving security and peace from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf and beyond.
The debate over the right of any president to make war is hardly new and will not be settled in this conflict. Congress will, in any case, now vote against restricting that right. And irrespective of its constitutionality, the war in Iran is in no way illegal. According to international law expert Natasha Hausdorff, the relative strength and weakness of the warring parties are completely irrelevant. “Under real international law,” she writes, “the Israeli-US strikes are lawful if they continue to comply with the laws of armed conflict on necessity, distinction, proportionality and precaution. The indicators are that now, as previously, these principles are being applied.”
The arguments against the war are feeble at best and further weakened by their refusal to acknowledge the far stronger case for supporting it. This begins with the irrefutable fact that the Islamic Republic started this war 47 years ago by occupying the U.S. embassy in Tehran and holding 52 Americans hostage for hundreds of days. Iran started the war by torturing and executing Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, by blowing up the Marine barracks and the U.S. embassy in Beirut, and killing American soldiers during the Iraq war. The Ayatollahs started the war when their terrorist proxies launched hundreds of drone and rocket attacks against U.S. bases and ships throughout the region. Throughout, Iranian drug merchants, in league with South American cartels, have flooded the United States with deadly narcotics. Iranian assassins have targeted the Saudi and Israeli ambassadors in Washington, senior American officials, and, purportedly, the president.
The Iranian regime started this war by vowing openly and ardently each day since coming to power to destroy the United States and by assiduously developing the weapons to do so. Though Israel most certainly has an interest in defending itself from Iranian attacks, that interest is consonant with, not superior to, America’s, which is independent and critical. In what logical universe, a clearly-thinking person might well ask, does the United States not have a clear-cut casus belli against Iran?
