Joe Kent

The NYT article reveals that our military is telling President Trump what has been obvious from the onset of this war: there is no quick military solution in Iran and our early actions set the conditions for the stalemate we are in now. Trump’s best option is to declare victory and walk away now. Limit our exposure in the region, reduce the risk of Iran restarting the war on their terms, and reset negotiations with sanctions relief as both carrot and stick. The Iranians have adapted to our attacks. They can “win” simply by not losing. Future strikes will be less effective, cost us more in casualties, and further harden Iranian resolve. Killing the Supreme Leader rallied the Iranian people around the regime. By also eliminating many moderate leaders, we’ve left ourselves with mostly hardliners to negotiate with, who are unlikely to give Trump the concessions he’s demanding. Two lessons we should have learned in the GWOT: 1. If you stay within reach of the enemy, they will adapt and ultimately win the long war by grinding us down. Iran is doing this on a massive scale with ballistic missiles, air defenses, and drones—the same concept as IEDs, just more advanced. 2. Attacking a nation will rally the people around the regime we’re trying to overthrow, or around forces far worse. Regime change is a fool’s errand.

CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper says Iran and its proxies attacked U.S. troops and diplomats roughly 350 times in just 30 months before Operation Epic Fury. “That’s about every third day,” Cooper testified.