Trump’s Strike on Iran Fans Flames of Terror Attacks on Americans
AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi
When President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday night to announce that the United States had bombed several of Iran’s nuclear facilities, the casual tone of his social media post was belied by the momentous and profoundly destabilizing nature of this move.
The decision to join Israel’s war by bombing Iran is remarkably dangerous — not only because of the short-term spike of tension it will bring, but for what it portends in the months and years to come.
Trump wrote on Truth Social:
We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!Thank you for your attention to this.
There is clear logic for the strike. Iran has spent years inching towards nuclear weapons. The specter of Iranian nuclear capability has loomed over Israel’s security apparatus for decades. And any action that delays that outcome will undoubtedly produce a short-term gain for America’s closest ally in the region.
Yet this is an incredibly myopic calculus. Trump’s decision throws a lit match into a powder keg of an already volatile region and does so at a time when the global balance of power is more fragile than ever.
For years, diplomatic engagements with Tehran — imperfect as they were — at least created a modicum of stability. This strike will erode what little trust remains, collapse already fragile diplomatic backchannels, and create a dangerous vacuum that can quickly be filled by the most extreme actors across the Middle East and beyond.
Throughout history, we have seen time and again that aggressive American intervention, especially where it concerns Muslim-majority countries, does more than inflame public opinion — it fuels the recruitment machines of terrorist groups who revel in the image of America as an enemy to Islam. Radical extremist networks will inevitably leverage this attack as proof that their cause is righteous and their tactics justified.
The consequences could include a surge of terror plots — both lone wolf and organized — against U.S. civilians at home and abroad, often carried out by disaffected individuals who need only the thinnest justification for their personal martyrdom.
In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, we witnessed the ways in which American drone strikes produced deadly blowback that endured long after the tactical objectives were met. Do we truly believe this will end any differently with Iran? Even as American officials issue talking points about protecting democracy and preventing future wars, they cannot control the unpredictable and deadly currents of extremism they have just unleashed.
The world is not just a far more delicate place tonight. It’s more dangerous for American citizens both abroad and at home.
Contrary to much of the wishful thinking that abounds across cable news and social media, this is not just a strike. It is a dangerous roll of the dice that plays into the hands of those who wish to draw America into an endless cycle of retaliation — and it may come at the cost of innocent lives for years to come.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
