By his role in spearheading, and enthusiastically supporting, this ludicrous deal with Iran, I think Vice-President Vance has gutted his chances of winning the GOP contest to be the Presidential nominee in 2028. Rubio is doing his best to stay away from this disaster on stilts.
I’m not so sure. The first primaries are not for 19 more months – an eternity in politics. I think there’s a lot of “art of the possible” dynamics at work here.
However, I certainly grant that JD Vance will have many opportunities in the near future to truly firebomb his own hopes for the nomination and Presidency. The current situation is more akin to a minor car wreck – embarrassing, yes, but not irrecoverable.
We continue to inherit Jimmy Carter’s failure. I must add a third option to what I had posted elsewhere before. There are three ways to deal with Iran:
(1) Protracted land war with unacceptable loss of American lives.
(2) Nuclear weapons with unacceptable loss of civilian lives.
(3) Containment (the 3rd option) for which neither Congress nor the American public have the patience.
I don’t like the memorandum of understanding that Trump made with the mad mullahs, but it’s just an MOU and when Iran violates it (as I suspect they will), Trump will act accordingly. But our blogmeister Donald wrote elsewhere that he thinks Trump is spooked by the effect that extended conflict may have on the mid-term elections; thus, he listened to JD Vance (who I suspect was influenced by his Hindu wife). So all these things said, does anyone have a better solution than the three which I listed above? I am not being sarcastic or combative. I genuinely am interested to know what we can do substantively outside of the three options above that will rid the world of Shiite Islamic fanaticism.
BTW, I am a nuclear submarine sailor. Back in 79, my shipmates and I would have been happy to rain down radioactive fire and brimestone on Tehran as God had on Sodom and Gomorrah some 4000 years ago. Yeah, I know. Not very Christian of us, but that’s how we felt.
I think the biggest problem we are encountering in Iran is a lack of a true resistance force we can back, and thus one who could both take over and also keep the remnants of the Islamist elements at bay.
The Shah’s son has gotten a lukewarm response at best as such a figure – probably because most who would have backed him aren’t residents anymore. So right now we only have bad choices, and I’m not sure which one is the best one. Although I am certainly sympathetic to LQC’s memory of being on the sub and wanting to b-slap them back in 1979.
Madeleine Albright named the National Council of Resistance of Iran a foreign terrorist organization near the end of Clinton’s presidency … That effectively eliminated the only organized opposition to the mullahs in Iran. I find it hard to believe that Israel hasn’t been funding/arming/supporting some opposition for all these years, but if they have been, then where are they now?