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Nobody missed the implication of President Trump's language on Tuesday

These are two items from two different Truth Social posts from President Trump yesterday about the Israel/Iran war:

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.”

“We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there - We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”

That use of “we”, obviously meaning “The US and Israel, as a team”, answers (for now, because Trump is famously mercurial) the question of whether the extremely pro-Israel part of the Trump base, perhaps best represented by his ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, or the isolation-no-matter-what part of his base, perhaps best represented by Tucker Carlson, is winning the contest for Trump’s mind on this issue.

It’s not entirely surprising that the Huckabee side is winning because Trump demonstrated in his first term that he is the most pro-Israel president in American history. That said, given his aggressive campaigning against war — for which I consistently praise him — it’s slightly eyebrow-raising that he would rhetorically put himself in a position that almost commits him to do something if Iran keeps attacking Israeli civilians.

There’s much debate, not least because of Trump’s comments above, about whether the US and/or Israel should kill the truly evil Ayatollah Khameni. On the one hand, I’d cheer loudly if he died. On the other hand, I think the balance of the argument is actually against intentionally targeting him.

It’s not so much the argument made by Jesse Watters on Fox News (just as one example because many are using the same line), “it’s the ayatollah you know versus the ayatollah you don’t.” I don’t think that’s an important question; there is not enough difference among the ayatollahs to matter.

Instead, the important questions are

1. Would killing the Ayatollah would cause some Iranians who oppose the regime to “rally ‘round the flag” because of the national insult of killing the “Supreme Leader” even if they don’t like him?

2. Related: is there ANY chance of turning the IRGC against the regime (probably not but gotta ask) and if so is that made easier or more difficult by killing Khameni?

3. Can strikes against Iran that decapitate almost all of the rest of the regime, but especially the military, intelligence, and nuclear-related people, create an opportunity for regime change such as many people hoped would emerge from the Green Revolution of the Obama years, when Obama famously refused to support pro-democracy Iranians. (I’m not arguing that such support would have been easy or dispositive but I still would have liked to give it a try.)

4. Is there any real possibility of a non-Islamofascist government taking over in Iran, perhaps led by members of the deposed shah’s family? I don’t know that those people would be the basis of an excellent and competent government, but they’d be infinitely better than this crew. And, if the answer to #1 above is “yes”, then in pursuit of a “yes” to #4, even if it’s a low probability, we shouldn’t target Khameni for now.

To me, these are difficult questions and require serious thought by serious people, and then President Trump will have to make the sort of historic decisions that presidents are sometimes called upon to make. But if I were advising him, I’d say “Khameni definitely deserves killing, but on balance the odds of a better outcome for Iran and for the world, at least for now, point to not ‘taking him out.’”

p.s. JD Vance did his best today to split the baby, trying to appeal both to the isolationist part of MAGA and the “I’m good with anything Trump wants” part of MAGA: https://x.com/JDVance/status/1934996183702704404

Look, I'm seeing this from the inside, and am admittedly biased towards our president (and my friend), but there's a lot of crazy stuff on social media, so I wanted to address some things directly on the Iran issue:

First, POTUS has been amazingly consistent, over 10 years, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Over the last few months, he encouraged his foreign policy team to reach a deal with the Iranians to accomplish this goal. The president has made clear that Iran cannot have uranium enrichment. And he said repeatedly that this would happen one of two ways--the easy way or the "other" way.

Second, I've seen a lot of confusion over the issue of "civilian nuclear power" and "uranium enrichment." These are distinct issues. Iran could have civilian nuclear power without enrichment, but Iran rejected that. Meanwhile, they've enriched uranium far above the level necessary for any civilian purpose. They've been found in violation of their non-proliferation obligations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is hardly a rightwing organization.

It's one thing to want civilian nuclear energy. It's another thing to demand sophisticated enrichment capacity. And it's still another to cling to enrichment while simultaneously violating basic non-proliferation obligations and enriching right to the point of weapons-grade uranium.

I have yet to see a single good argument for why Iran needed to enrich uranium well above the threshold for civilian use. I've yet to see a single good argument for why Iran was justified in violating its non-proliferation obligations. I've yet to see a single good pushback against the IAEA's findings.

Meanwhile, the president has shown remarkable restraint in keeping our military's focus on protecting our troops and protecting our citizens.

He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president. And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy.

But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue. And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus.