Trump’s vapid promise: Help is on the way. Not!  

We have hard these words from US President Trump multiple times in the last two months telling the Iranian people to continue their struggle because “help is on the way.”  However, truth be told, US military buildup in the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean notwithstanding, the US will not significantly attack Iran. The promise that help is on the way was and remains….effectively but not surprisingly meaningless.

The fact, supported by experience, is that Trump simply does not want to take the chance that US troops will be returned to their families in body bags. He knows that if the military suffers fatalities, his pledge not to bring America into any wars will have been shown to be worthless thereby possibly sufficiently damaging to actually decimate the support of his MAGA base.

For those who point to the US attack on Iran last June and the capture of Maduro in Venezuela in January as examples of his willingness to order the military to combat, a closer look at both those situations indicates that the risk was either zero or close to that.

In the case of Iran, Trump was only willing to commit the B-2 bombers to an attack on Iran after we here in Israel fully disabled Iran’s air defense systems. That being the case, the B-2’s carrying bombs designed to disable Iran’s nuclear production capabilities (about which they were only partially and temporarily successful), were never in danger of being attacked. The only risk faced during the 30+ hours the planes were in the air was a potential problem with mid-air refueling or human error on the part of the crew. There were simply no other risks.

Regarding the attack on Venezuela and the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro, the US had so much firepower in place coupled with very extensive planning, all facing a relatively incompetent force of imported Cuban and Russian defenders, that the risk of suffering fatalities was close to zero, although a few US troops were wounded. In other words, going into that operation the military commanders knew that the risk of seeing US troops killed was minimal.

However, committing US troops to military action against Iran is a totally different story with a higher degree of risk. Iran has a large stockpile of missiles, drones, and other UAVs which have the capability to inflict heavy damage on the large naval vessels that are part of America’s armada in the region. A barrage of incoming kamikaze type drones directed at US aircraft carriers, for example, could result in a massive number of casualties. Ships that size move relatively slowly and cannot easily take evasive action. Some would even call them sitting ducks waiting to be attacked.

What Trump would probably prefer, and there has been some scuttlebutt about that over the last days, is for Israel to attack Iran first. That would no doubt cause Iran to retaliate, against both Israel and US installations in the region. After that the US would have every reason to attack Iran as a matter of self defense which would enable Trump to tell his base that, as promised, he did not bring America into a war but the country has a legitimate obligation to defend itself so he had no choice but to respond.

So, for those who are losing sleep worrying when the next Iran war will start, rest easy. The US will not start a conflagration in the Middle East and my guess is that even our leadership here in Israel is not interested in starting a war that we cannot finish on our own. Remember all of the simulations show that without the support of the west (read: the US) Israel cannot complete the job.

Given that and acknowledging the fact that President Trump is capable of changing his mind on a whim it would be folly for Israel to start something it cannot finish on its own and depend on the support of a peripatetic US president for backup.

Russian writer Leo Tolstoy is reputed to have said: “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” Years later philosopher Bertrand Russell said: “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” And most recently US General (Stormin’) Norman Schwarzkopf said: “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.” All powerful words to be weighed carefully by any government considering sending its citizens into harms way.