Is "Regime Change" Different Under Trump? | Victor Davis Hanson

Marco Rubio gave a talk, I'm speaking on Wednesday, last night, I followed him on Hannity, and he outlined exactly what we were doing in Iran, and he made a very subtle point. He said we're going to destroy their Air Force, we're going to destroy their Navy, their ballistic missile capability, both fabrication and the existing stocks of them. He implied that we're going to stop them from killing Americans and disrupting the Middle East by attriting their military infrastructure. What he didn't say explicitly was we were going to ensure they didn't have a bomb, but it was implicit because he said, you know, we don't know where it is, but we've been bombing and bombing, and the Israelis have said that. The Americans have been trying to seal that suspected kosh of enough enriched uranium to make 11 bombs. So they said, and so you don't, they can never get it. So what was left unsaid that everybody's asking about? Well, the first is regime change. I went back and looked, Trump never said we're going in there to change the government. What he did was very unique. He had these other objectives, but then by extension, he said, we're here to help us on the way. So the idea is that he's going to so devastate the military architecture of Iran, which he's almost done, but not destroy the power, the water, the communication, so the people won't starve to death. And therefore the Revolutionary Guard Corps will be weakened and the dissidents and protesters will be empowered. And that process can go on and on and on after we leave, because they're in a dilemma. If they want to reestablish credibility, they're going to have to get their hands on oil revenue. They're going to have to open the strait to everybody. And then if they do get their hands on oil revenue, the people are not going to sit there while they spend another half trillion dollars to buy missiles from North Korea and give a hundred billion dollars a year to terrorist proxies or something. They're not going to do that while they're starving. So they're going to really a terrible place. So then he has come up with the Venezuela situation. Rather than have a revolution or rather than arm that and have a big mess, i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, he's basically saying we're going to only talk with strong men or who have credibility that were elected in some primitive fashion, and that will ostracize the theocracy and the Revolutionary Guard. But that's only half of the equation. The Israelis are killing them anytime a person identifies himself as a chief leader of either of those two groups, they get killed. So what Trump is saying, we've had an almost internal regime change, kind of like Venezuela. Instead of kidnapping Maduro, the Israelis are killing them. And then the people who are left, we tell the Israelis, these people want to cut a deal. And if we can cut a deal with them and they can remain in power, they will not rebuild the arsenals in the bomb. They just want to be prosperous. They're just autocratic thugs. But it's better than nation building and it's better than not doing anything at all. So that was interesting about the regime change. The other two things that everybody's asking about, Strait of Hormuz, Strait of Hormuz, Strait of Hormuz. Well, Trump and Rubio basically said we'd get no oil out of there. And it's international water, so Iran is breaking it. And the Europeans say, well, they weren't breaking it till you came in. Yeah, they weren't breaking it till you came in, till we came in because you were appeasing them. And they were building a bomb and they were building ballistic missiles to hit every one of your capitals, you fools. So Trump is saying, all they have to do is say, I'm France, one frigate. I'm Britain, one frigate. I am Italy, one frigate. I'm Germany, one. That would be all, just 10, 12 ships as a show. But they won't even do that because their restive populations are 15 to 16% Muslim. And by the way, the Muslims in Europe are more radical than the Muslims in Iran. I don't mean the government, but the average Iranian on the street is more pro-Western than the average Muslim in Europe. No doubt about it. So they are shackled. And the Straits, there's two or three solutions. The most severe and dangerous is taking Karg Island, cutting off their oil revenues way in the North, and then making a sanitary corridor along the Northern shore. But why do that? The best way would be to get an international coalition of people who use the Strait and have them go by and say to the Iranians, these are your customers. If you want to fire on them, we're going to destroy you. And then have a sky full of Apaches and warthogs going up and down the coast to get tactical weapons and drones. I think that's very doable. The other long-term solution is Saudi Arabia could easily build two pipelines, one to near a lot right on the Red Sea, that little eddy, that little bay on the Red Sea, and they could ship all of their oil either out the Suez Canal or across, out the Suez Canal, or they could go out to the Indian Ocean to India, I mean, to India and China, or, and not exclusively, but in complimentary, they could build a shorter line right across from the oil fields through Jordan, the West Bank to Israel, right around Haifa or somewhere. And they could, the Israelis could protect it for them and they could charge them a modest fee, or they could be paid in oil. And the Saudis then would have two alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz. So that would be the best, the best solution. And then they could have other Gulf States tap into it and just make the Strait of Hormuz irrelevant in 10 years. And that would hurt Iran unless they wanted to, you know, reform.