Commentary: What lessons are foreign leaders taking from Trump's Iran bombing

Asked during a White House news conference last week whether he would consider striking Iran again if the U.S. intelligence community found the country reassembling its nuclear program, President Donald Trump answered unequivocally: “Without question.”

Trump’s remarks were as ominous as the query posed to him, for it suggests that despite the U.S. bombing campaign against Tehran’s three major nuclear installations on June 22, the Iranians retain the resources, equipment and enriched uranium to continue their work.

Indeed, how much damage occurred at those installations has transformed into a mini-scandal of sorts. Different people are offering different interpretations of what was hit, how effective the military operation was and whether Tehran was able to squirrel away some of its uranium stockpile before U.S. bombs started falling.

Ultimately, it’s too early for any definitive answers because a full damage assessment is still in the works, but the Trump administration nevertheless insists everything Washington wanted to hit was destroyed.

Preliminary analysis from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence shop, paints a more pessimistic picture, as do some European countries. International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mariano Grossi, whose job it is to account for all of this materiel, has leaned toward a more cautious conclusion, telling CBS News over the weekend that Iran could theoretically start enriching again in a matter of months.

For those of us who don’t have access to classified information, all of these conflicting explanations can be frustrating. Ultimately, all we can really do is wait for the intelligence professionals to perform their due diligence and for a full damage report to be flushed out.

In the meantime, there’s another big topic we should be discussing, even if it’s less sexy and isn’t a big part of the current news cycle right now: What are the long-term U.S. foreign policy implications of the strikes in Iran? And are there any lessons foreign leaders, allies and adversaries alike should be taking from Trump’s decision to bomb Iran?

This may seem like an abstract question. But it’s not; governments around the world are likely in the process of drawing conclusions. Some commentators are beginning to write stories about how Trump’s decision to use force against Iran may prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping to change their conclusions about Trump’s propensity for risk-taking. If Trump is willing to roll the dice on a bombing operation against Iran, then perhaps he’s more willing to dip into the military tool kit than first thought?

On the face of it, there’s some logic to the argument. If you’re Xi or Putin, you’re likely going to be more reluctant to stir the hornet’s nest today than you were earlier in the month. Trump values unpredictability as an asset of statecraft and dealmaking, and there was nothing predictable about a U.S. president who campaigned on getting the United States out of the Middle East, then green-lighting airstrikes to neuter Tehran’s nuclear program.

There’s nothing predictable about Trump claiming to want diplomacy with Iran and giving the Iranians a two-week reprieve, only to settle on forceful measures 48 hours later. And there’s nothing predictable about Trump reportedly vetoing an Israeli plan to assassinate Iran’s supreme leader, only to take to social media and openly flirt with the prospect of doing just that.

If you’re the leader of an adversarial state, you can’t afford not to take all of this into consideration. Trump’s subscription to the so-called “madman theory” of international politics — making the other side believe you will do just about anything to get what you want — is likely weighing on their minds and may impact their decision-making.

But with that being said, there’s always a danger of extrapolating too much from a single event. For instance, does Trump dropping a dozen or so 30,000-pound bombs on a few Iranian nuclear facilities tell us much of anything about how Trump would respond if China launched an invasion or blockade of Taiwan, if Russia chose to salami-slice territory along NATO’s eastern flank or if North Korea suddenly bombarded South Korean military positions along the Demilitarized Zone?

Probably not. Not all contingencies are created equal, and the stakes are higher in some situations than they are in others. The president deciding to do something in one area of the globe against a conventionally weak state doesn’t offer many clues about how he would act somewhere else against a much more formidable opponent.

Take Taiwan as an example. There’s no question that Xi and the wider Chinese Communist Party apparatus want to reincorporate the self-governed island into the mainland. Xi has ordered the Chinese military to be prepared to take Taiwan by 2027, although whether the order to do so would be made at that time is unknown. The Chinese military has squeezed Taiwan repeatedly in past years, regularly flying sorties across the median line to test the island’s air defenses. Beijing is getting more impatient with the status quo as the years go by.

All of this is no doubt alarming in Washington’s foreign policy circles, not to mention within the bowels of the Pentagon. Even so, deciding whether defending Taiwan is in the U.S. interest won’t be any less difficult now than it was weeks earlier. U.S. defense planners still need to account for the same factors today as they did last year: How many casualties would the United States sustain? How beat up will the U.S. Navy be in terms of its capacity to project power? Could a war over Taiwan spiral into a nuclear confrontation? And what would be the impact on the global economy?

U.S. strikes on Iran don’t help us answer any of these queries.

Bottom line: Treat any grand pronunciations about “lessons learned” with extreme skepticism.

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Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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