A regime in crisis is a danger, not an invitation

The Washington Examiner reports that Iran's government, strained by the anger of its own citizens, may be calculating that a conflict with the United States would serve as a useful distraction — turning popular fury outward before it can unseat those in power. I find this entirely plausible as a description of how desperate governments behave. A regime that cannot satisfy its people will reach for an enemy, and there is no enemy so convenient, for such purposes, as a powerful foreign nation.

This is precisely the circumstance that demands the coolest judgment a republic can summon. When a foreign government wants a confrontation, the worst thing its adversary can do is supply one on terms the aggressor has chosen. The Examiner's argument — that the United States should pursue targeted action and empower Iranians themselves rather than fight a full-scale war — has the shape of prudence. But I counsel that even this framing be handled with great care, for there is a thin and treacherous line between empowering a people and entangling a republic in another nation's civil contest.

I spoke, in what I am told became my Farewell Address, of the dangers of permanent enmity as strongly as I spoke of the dangers of permanent alliance. A nation that organizes its foreign policy around the destruction of a particular foreign government has made that government the fixed star of its own compass — and that is a kind of dependency, however aggressive its form. Interest, not passion, must govern. What does the Republic actually need from this region? Stability of commerce, freedom of navigation, the prevention of weapons capable of mass destruction from reaching those who would use them indiscriminately — these are interests. The toppling of a government is an instrument, not an end, and instruments must be chosen by their fitness for the purpose, not by the satisfaction they offer to inflamed opinion at home.

The Examiner's lead also hints at something I regard as a cardinal rule: do not hand an embattled regime the gift of a unifying enemy. Any action taken must be calibrated so that the Iranian people — who, I am told, have shown extraordinary courage in their dissent — see the United States as something other than the aggressor their government requires it to be. This is not sentimentality. It is strategy. A people who associate American power with the destruction of their cities will not be the partners of liberty; a people who see American power checking their oppressors without consuming them may, in time, become exactly that.

Finally, I remind the Republic of what I have always believed about the civilian direction of military force. The choice of whether to strike, when to strike, and how to limit what is struck belongs to accountable officials subject to law and, where the Constitution demands it, to the deliberation of the legislature. Specialized strikes are still acts of war in their consequences, whatever name is given to them in their planning. The citizenry deserves a full accounting of the purposes for which their sons and daughters, and their treasury, are committed.

My counsel is this: engage Iran's crisis with clear eyes about American interest, with every effort to deny that government the confrontation it seeks, and with the full weight of civilian deliberation behind any use of force. Passion is the ally of the regime in Tehran. Measured, lawful, interest-driven policy is its adversary.