Michael Knowles

We've been in hostilities with Iran for 50 years.

But the problem is, in order to establish a just war, you need to have a reasonable probability of success, which means you have to know exactly what your objective is.

Is the objective just to get rid of the nuclear program?

is it to set back the nuclear program is it regime change as many people wanted from the beginning so you need a reasonable probability of success which i don't think we're really going to have at least on the regime change front don't forget the mullahs for all their wickedness and sins lasted twice as long in power as the cia regime that we helped to promote in 1953 with the cia coup that helped get rid of mosaddegh and and ensconced the shah so i thought the mullahs are a lot tougher than people give them credit for and then the other thing that you need

is proportionality, that the goods to be achieved are going to outweigh the losses incurred.

And there, too, it's a real country.

These guys are really tough.

They're a very evil regime, so they're willing to use all the sorts of tricks at their disposal.

And on the on the American front, people have PTSD from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

So they don't want a protracted military engagement.

They don't want a ton of boots on the ground.

So it's a brutal kind of quagmire.

The one thing I would say for President Trump's position here trying to negotiate a way out of this thing.

is that many of our toughest presidents, not just many American presidents, but even some of our toughest presidents on matters of war and peace actually took the more dovish side.

So you think of Ronald Reagan famously, and this one involves Iran after the Beirut barracks bombings, Reagan did not directly retaliate.

He actually pulled the troops out of Lebanon.

You think of Truman being reserved on war with China.

You think of Eisenhower and Kennedy being more reserved on war with Vietnam.

So, you know, I don't think that Trump is in an impossible situation here.

He's in a brutal situation.