On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” The Atlantic Staff Writer David Brooks said that he has concerns about Operation Epic Fury, but also noted the malign actions of Iran’s regime before saying, “What bugs me, frankly, is the people who are sure, the people who are sure this is a terrible thing, and the people who are sure this is a good thing. We just don’t know.”
Brooks said, “I hate the way the decision was made, which seems to have been extremely haphazard. I have shared everybody’s reservations and fears that there’s no exit strategy, that there’s no plausible way to change the regime, let alone the deaths that are happening. And so, I share everybody’s fears. It’s also true that the 1979 Iranian Revolution was one of the worst events of the 20th century, and it began 47 years of terrorism, extremism, theocratic fascism. It started with one to two million people dead in the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, there were 241 Americans killed by Iranian supervision in Beirut, and you go on. And Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, they have destabilized the Middle East. They have killed people in Syria. A couple weeks ago, they killed somewhere between 10 and 30 thousand people in Iran who were protesting. And so, this is a destructive and savage regime that has destabilized the Middle East. It’s also a regime that is in an unprecedentedly vulnerable situation. It’s lost the faith of its people. Its economy is in tatters. Its military is destroyed. Its regime is decapitated. So, I’m ambivalent. I hope the Iranian regime falls. And that could happen.”
He continued, “What bugs me, frankly, is the people who are sure, the people who are sure this is a terrible thing, and the people who are sure this is a good thing. We just don’t know. But the people who are ignoring the horrors that Iran has perpetrated on the world for the last 47 years should be hoping this works. And we just don’t know.”
He added, “I would say the reason we’re at war is because Iran declared war on us 47 years ago, and that we’ve been in a forever war with Iran that has gone up until last week, when they were trying to reconstitute their nuclear weapons.” And that the Trump administration has created uncertainty with impulsive actions.
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