Tune into Fox News’s Life, Liberty, & Levin and there’s a decent chance its host, Mark Levin, is spouting off about Iran and the threat it poses to human civilization. Preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, perhaps by overthrowing the entire regime in Tehran, has been one of Levin’s pet projects for as long as people have been breathing oxygen. Levin’s X account is inundated with Iran material as well, with the theme usually centering on the urgency of the Iranian nuclear threat, the necessity of a military operation to stop Tehran’s pursuit of a bomb, and how those crazy, bearded, black-robed octogenarians want to destroy everything we stand for.
Levin has gone even further recently. During his show on Sunday, he stated that “for all intents and purposes, Iran now has a nuclear weapon.” He based his stark conclusion not on U.S. intelligence community assessments—after all, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence hasn’t made that determination—but rather on a bevy of news reports that, coincidentally, say no such thing. Instead, those stories reinforce what those of us who follow these issues already know—Iran is cranking up its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium even as negotiations with the United States continue. He also cites a dubious Australian intelligence report that contradicts what Washington’s own spooks have been saying: that Tehran doesn’t have an existing nuclear weapons program.
Levin, however, isn’t the only arch-hawk on Iran trying to torpedo the Trump administration’s ongoing diplomacy with Tehran. John Bolton, a national security adviser during Trump’s first term (the president fired him over policy differences, although Bolton insists he resigned), has been devoting the last two decades of his life to the cause of regime change in Iran. Bolton called for bombing Iran as far back as 2007, wrote an infamous New York Times op-ed in 2015 arguing for the very same thing, was an architect of Trump’s maximum pressure policy when he landed a top job in the White House and continues to give multiple interviews on why it’s pointless to even talk with the Iranians in the first place. Elliot Abrams, another Trump national security official during the first term, is also out there giving opinions on the matter, and his argument is as predictable as the sun rising from the east: anything short of a full and complete Iranian capitulation on the nuclear program and a complete 180-degree turn from Iran’s current foreign policy is unacceptable.
There is only so much shallow, ideologically-laced analysis one can take, and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News personality who remains prominent in Trump’s orbit, recently found his limit. On Wednesday, he penned an article-length post under his X handle, passionately explaining why Levin and the rest of the hawks are not only dead wrong in their conclusions but deliberately lying to scare Trump into green-lighting another war in the Middle East. Carlson’s comments are worth reading in full, but this excerpt was particularly revealing:
Mark Levin was at the White House today, lobbying for war with Iran. To be clear, Levin has no plans to fight in this or any other war. He’s demanding that American troops do it. We need to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, he and likeminded ideologues in Washington are now arguing. They’re just weeks away.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same people have been making the same claim since at least the 1990s. It’s a lie. In fact, there is zero credible intelligence that suggests Iran is anywhere near building a bomb, or has plans to. None. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignorant or dishonest. If the US government knew Iran was weeks from possessing a nuclear weapon, we’d be at war already.
As an outsider looking in, I can’t verify the palace intrigue. I have no idea whatsoever if Levin is whispering in Trump’s ear and urging him to go to war with Iran. Nor can I tell you how effective his pleas would be. But what I can say is that, on the substance, Carlson is absolutely right: Trump should in no way, shape, or form be seeking Levin’s counsel on this subject. The same goes for Bolton, Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, or any other person who confidently believed that a sticks-only approach to Iran would over time get the country to cave to U.S. demands.
Three points are worth considering.
First, to put it kindly, Trump soliciting recommendations from any of these folks would be about as foolish as JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon soliciting financial advice from Mike Tyson. This may sound mean or dispiriting, but this observation is based on facts and the public record. It’s indisputable, for instance, that everybody on the above list clamored for Trump to rip up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in service of a better alternative. The logic behind that strategy was two-fold: (1) the JCPOA was a horrible deal that ceded too much to the Iranians (particularly on the issue of nuclear restrictions sunsetting over a 10-15 time-span), and (2) Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would have no option but to come crawling back to the negotiating table on Washington’s terms once U.S. sanctions were re-imposed.
We all know how those assumptions turned out. Iran responded to U.S. economic pressure with pressure of its own. You didn’t need to have a degree in international relations or Iranian studies to predict this; small and middle-sized powers who live in a rough neighborhood, are highly nationalistic, and have a proud history are reticent to roll over to larger powers for fear of having to succumb to more pressure and greater demands down the road. Iran possessed all three elements, and it responded as many of us, at the time, thought that it would—by breaking out of the nuclear box the JCPOA had created, enriching more uranium, enriching at higher qualities, fiddling with international inspectors’ ability to monitor Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure, and even attacking civilian oil vessels in the Persian Gulf.
In short: Trump followed the hawks in his first administration and the results were a worsening of the problem. Knowing everything we know now, why on earth would he heed their advice again?
Second, we ought to be clear about what Levin & Company want: no diplomacy and no deal. They aren’t interested in supporting Trump’s negotiations with Tehran because they don’t believe you can truly negotiate with the Iranians in the first place. The entire concept of sitting down with an adversary is an otherworldly concept to them, akin to losing before the game even starts. To be fair, this isn’t unique to them; Washington, DC is full of think tankers, consultants, and ex-officials who wrongly equate diplomacy to weakness, if not surrender. In reality, it’s how international problems are managed and resolved—it’s what Richard Nixon did with China, what Ronald Reagan did with the Soviet Union, and what Trump himself did with the Houthis weeks ago. If you tie one hand behind your back and leave out negotiations, then you’re depriving yourself of a key tool of statecraft. That doesn’t serve U.S. interests.
Finally, let’s assume for a moment that diplomacy falls apart and military strikes become the Trump administration’s top option. Would this option even work as the proponents intend?
Sure, a lot of lead and iron would land on the Iranian nuclear apparatus. Some of the centrifuge facilities and plants above ground would be destroyed. Some of the wings below ground, like at Natanz and Fordow, might be destroyed as well. Iranian scientists, technicians, and engineers would be killed, and the country would lose at least some of its enrichment capability. Nobody is disputing this, and it would be dishonest not to acknowledge it.
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But in solving the Iranian nuclear problem, military force is akin to slapping a band-aid on a patient who needs life-support. At best, it’s a delaying tactic, and the delay would be far shorter than what the U.S. could get from even an imperfect agreement. The Iranians, facing what is essentially an act of war perpetrated by the United States, would be highly unlikely to surrender their nuclear program in full. In fact, the opposite is more likely—those facilities would be re-built, deeper underground, and spread out over larger swaths of the country. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which currently has a presence in Iran, wouldn’t be able to monitor any of this activity, since Tehran is likely to kick out inspectors after any U.S. bombing operation is over. Khamenei, who hasn’t yet pulled the trigger on nuclear weaponization despite the salacious claims made by Levin and others, would have all the more reason to sprint towards a nuclear deterrent to prevent similar attacks from happening again. The U.S. would then be presented with two options: do the entire bombing campaign over again or accept the fact that Washington’s reckless actions in the first instance have created a world in which Iran is a member of the nuclear club.
None of this even mentions Iranian retaliation outside of the nuclear file. Supporters of the military option consistently overestimate America’s power and underestimate Iran’s capacity for retaliation. Missile strikes on U.S. bases in the Middle East—particularly in Iraq—renewed attacks against oil shipments and plants in the Gulf, and Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks inside the Middle East are all possibilities. And because the U.S. foreign policy establishment thinks it’s a stellar idea to have 40,000 or so U.S. troops based in the region on a quasi-permanent basis, the Iranians would have plenty of targets to choose from.
All of which is a long way of saying that if Trump, in seeking sound advice, has to choose between Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson, Trump should go with Carlson.
