Democrats Can’t Update Their Script On The Iran War To Incorporate New Realities

The Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy appears to know just one thing, and that one thing is that Donald Trump is very bad. To Murphy, all events prove this. No other conclusions are possible. Someone ran a red light in Enid, Oklahoma, this morning, and a diner in Michigan ran out of whole milk during the breakfast rush: You see, Trump is a danger to America.

And so, at this exact moment, Murphy proposes to stop Trump’s “insane war,” a war that has very tenuously paused for peace talks and a ceasefire. Loudly and with great theatrical zeal, he proposes to stop a thing that is stopped.

It’s like a man runs who into the theater, ignoring the empty stage and the house lights and the audience walking to the exits, and announces that he’s come to stop the show.

Democrats have done this before. The American military raided Caracas on Jan. 3, then left. No war resulted. No hostilities continued. Days and then weeks later, congressional Democrats were still engaged in meaningless theatrics, boldly declaring their intention to stop Trump’s war in Venezuela. Which didn’t exist.

They were fighting ghosts, or the noises in their own heads.

Wars mature. A bunch of stuff happens, and no one understands the action, because of the inherent chaos of large-scale violence. “The fog of war.” But then we arrive at inflection points, and maybe the fog parts, just a little. We get some modest clarity on murky things that have been happening in an atmosphere of sustained uncertainty.

Without saying that we can know all of this, because war is the enemy of certainty, a few new realities seem to be emerging. First, the Iranian strength of controlling the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint is turning out to work both ways. Kharg Island, the critical oil production center for the Iranians, is 300 miles north of the strait, inside and above it. The chokepoint isn’t just a chokepoint that Iran can impose on the world — it’s both things, a chokepoint Iran can impose that can be imposed on Iran. The Iranian economy can be strangled by the same chokepoint. The Trump administration, imposing a naval blockade on the strait that Iran was blockading, just identified that reality with brutal clarity.

A bunch of military axioms focus on the way that the risks of combat bounce and echo. “If the enemy is in range, so are you,” and “tracers work both ways.” You can oppose the war, or doubt the wisdom of starting it, and see that both sides face risk from fighting it. The risks for Iran are emerging, and the way they play out remains to be seen. A bunch of professional military planners at CENTCOM probably know what they are.

Update your cognitive maps, or you end up like Chris Murphy. Senate Democrats now scream that they intend to end Trump’s war, while Trump … says that he intends to end Trump’s war. Events continue. Last week’s talking points won’t work this week. It’s also probably way too early to say, as people seem to enjoy saying, that Iran is a disaster just like Vietnam.

The ending of the war remains unclear, and the ceasefire might turn out to only be an operational pause before fighting resumes. Or it might presage a fragile and messy peace, or it might precede a lasting peace made on reasonable terms. But notice that events are developing. And if you get a chance, mention that simple fact to Chris Murphy.

Chris Bray is a senior correspondent at The Federalist and a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army. He has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at “Tell Me How This Ends,” here.