What to Do with Iran?

The recent attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and the shooting down of a U.S. military surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz has created tension in the region while the world is watching what the Trump administration’s proper response should be against the perpetrator, the Islamic Republic and its terrorist paramilitary group, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Many experts and pundits have been busy all day making assumptions of what the Trump response will be or should be. The IRGC commander-in-chief Maj-Gen Hossein Salami confirmed the attack on the U.S. spy drone and warned the US to respect Iran’s territorial integrity.

Meanwhile, President Trump told reporters that he believed that Iran unintentionally shot down an American spy drone Thursday, calling the move “a very big mistake.”

Well, I am not a mind reader and I don’t know what the Trump administration is going to do in retaliation. But, I am fully confident that the attack on the drone was without a doubt intentional and there is no mistake about it. The question is what to do next!!

I don’t believe we need to go to war with the Islamic regime over a drone. We must exercise restraint from any temptation to attack any part of Iran’s soil with cruise missiles, yet, we cannot let the regime get away without any punishment.

Here are my suggestions:

The Islamic Republic is highly isolated, sanctions are working and economically they are one step away from becoming another Venezuela.  This brutal regime is on the verge of collapse. By attacking the IRI militarily, we will give them new life. It is my conviction that a military attack against Iran should not even be the last card on the table. Any such move, either by Israel, the U.S., or a combination of both, will trigger a kind of turmoil that can set the region ablaze. And the blaze will most assuredly scorch Israel and hugely damage the U.S.

If we must retaliate, let’s just make a limited attack on their oil rigs and a few warships as former President Ronald Reagan did in 1988. Besides, the military option can always be exercised.

A sanction is a punishment levied on another nation, or on individual citizens of another country. It is an important foreign policy and economic pressure that can be described as a sort of carrot-and-stick approach to deal with international trade and politics.

There are still those who are against sanctions for a variety of reasons. Some say that sanctions cannot be effectively enforced; others claim that sanctions have never worked in the past and won’t work in the future. These nay-sayers never come up with any practical or viable alternative.

The sanctions clearly hurt the Iranian people. No question about that. Yet, a temporary hurt of this nature is a price that people are willing to pay to get rid of this scourge of the IRI. These Mullahs are determined to get their bloody hands on the atomic bomb and further strengthen their position in promoting violence and mayhem in the Middle East and beyond. In the process, the Iranian people will end up being victimized.  President Trump must step up the pressure on the IRI. Once the IRI falls, the lynchpin of Islamism will be destroyed. America, Israel, and the rest of the world will be hugely safer without the end-of-the-worlder Mullahs being in command with nuclear weapons at their disposal.

There’s also a general agreement that sanctions have worked, gripping Iran financially and bringing its leaders to the negotiating table. As mentioned, Iran’s economy is, by any measure, in terrible shape. If we shut down Iran’s oil industry, that would do the trick. That would be the end of this brutal regime. I believe we need to stick with the plan and don’t take the bait and go to war with a weak adversary.

The sanctions will also damage Iran’s power to export goods like pistachios and its famous Persian rugs. The most significant impact of the sanctions may be the number of European companies that will stop doing business with Iran.

In short:  we must realize if the mullahs get the bomb, they will make use of it in numerous ways. They will use it for blackmail, they will use it in small packages through untraceable proxies, and they might even launch it by their missiles in a homicide-suicide fashion which is their trademark.

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