Bloomberg Opinion: Trump Doesn't Need to Strike Iran. His Sanctions Are Already Devastating It.

I tend to think we do have to hit Iran if they attack more ships, but here's the other perspective: Iran is cracking under brutal sanctions and wants to change the circumstances in order to wheedle its way out of the sanctions.

Why give them that change? They're the ones that need a change of storyline. We don't.

What we're seeing unfold in the Persian Gulf is a confrontation between a U.S. president who doesn’t know when he's winning, and a Supreme Leader who doesn't know when he's losing. If Donald Trump changes his mind again and orders an attack on Iranian targets, he will have played into Ali Khamenei's hands.

It's too early to exhale after Trump's decision to cancel a military strike last night. If he could order the jets scrambled once -- without giving Congress or American allies much time to consult and advise -- he can do so again. The next time, he may not call it off.

But that would be to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Trump seems to have lost sight of the fact that his "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign against the Islamic Republic is working: Iran's economy is feeling great pain, and its isolation is deepening. For all of its proclamations of resistance and resilience, the regime in Tehran is plainly alarmed.

In its panic, it has started to lash out in ways that hurt its own interests, and erode the sympathy it has enjoyed in international circles since Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear deal last year...

And Trump was, for once, playing his cards reasonably well. He stated his openness to negotiations and his desire to avoid war...

This is exactly the right response to Iran's provocations: To brush them off and allow the regime to damage itself in the court of world opinion, even as it is continually weakened by sanctions...

What should Trump do instead? Hold his nerve, keep his patience and let Iran dig itself into a deeper hole.

Thoughts?

Killing them softly > killing them loudly?

As long as they're being killed, I guess I'm fine with it.

Meanwhile, a short sad fat little man howls impotently.

George Conway blasted President Trump and called for him to resign from office after he walked back a planned military strike against Iran in response to the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone.

“Trump didn’t realize UNTIL TEN MINUTES BEFOREHAND that a planned airstrike would kill over a hundred people and would therefore be grossly disproportionate to the loss of a UAV?” Conway, lawyer and husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, tweeted Friday. “To say this is amateur hour would defame amateurs.”

"Resign. If you didn’t know this until it was almost too late, you’re even more of an idiot than people think you are," Conway tweeted in response to Trump. "Do the country and the world a favor. Go back to real estate, where the worst you can do is kill banks."

Dude, if you spent that kind of energy trying to repair with your wife, maybe you wouldn't be such a spazz all the time.

posted by Ace of Spades at 07:15 PM

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