In response to Iran’s “surprise” attacks on US forces in Jordan, the US answered with a powerful response.
US forces carried out a “heavy wave” of strikes, attacking dozens of targets, including military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites, and maritime capabilities, said US Central Command after the strikes were completed. “The strikes aimed to further diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces, commercial shipping, and neighboring Gulf countries,” the command said.
And President Donald Trump (R):
We are going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn.
This is nothing but a few wholly inadequate love taps, though, to use Trump’s on phrase. His dislike for the killing and destruction war causes is well known, but here he’s letting it cloud his judgment.
The only way to diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces is to destroy those threats’ physical capability to act on their enmity. If we know where those targets, those command centers, missile and drone facilities,… are, we need to hit and destroy all of them, in rapid sequence if not simultaneously, not just bang some of them in onesies and twosies strikes. The terrorists must be completely disarmed, as many of their—now IRGC—leadership killed as we can reach, and the surviving leadership blinded by eliminating their command centers, surveillance facilities, military radar systems.
Worse from Trump’s perspective (were he to get better advice from his civilian advisors), the tit-for-tat that is this turn-taking foolishness only runs up, for the mid- and long-term, the casualty count and the physical destruction.
It’s time to be serious. Hit Iran with continuous waves of strikes strong enough actually to be worthy of being called “heavy.” Diplomacy can easily and straightforwardly be carried out while these strikes are ongoing rather than during pauses, which are strongly beneficial to the terrorists: safe passage to a meeting site can easily be granted and enforced for Iranian decision makers’ travel.