Iran has declared war on the United States — militarily, legally, diplomatically, morally and politically. They have engaged in repeated casus belli (legal causes for war) since the mullahs took Americans hostage in 1979.
Since that time, they have used their surrogates to attack American targets. We are entitled to respond militarily, as we are doing. (RELATED: Why On Earth Did Biden Give Iranian Proxies So Much Time To Prepare For Our Retaliatory Strikes?)
But we are also entitled to go much further and treat them as aggressors who have effectively declared war on us. We are entitled to destroy their capacity to continue to wage war against us and our allies.
The policy question in not whether we have a right to wage war against Iran. It is whether it is in our interest to do so.
It would be best if we could achieve all or most of the ends we legitimately seek without employing the costly and dangerous means of all-out war. That is what the Biden administration is seeking to do by attacking some of Iran’s proxies without hitting military targets within Iran itself. But can that limited strategy work?
Iran’s strategy has long been to use primarily Arab soldiers to do its dirty work, without endangering its own non-Arab soldiers and civilians — a sort of ethno-religious colonialism. That is why critics quip that Iran is willing to fight till the last Arab!
The Biden strategy plays into their hands. We are targeting Syrian, Iraqi and Yemeni Arabs in an effort to deter the non-Arab mullahs of Iran.