I & I Editorial BoardHaving predicted doom ever since the first U.S. bombs exploded in Iran six months ago, what would the anti-Trump chorus do if the president actually succeeds in bringing this terrorist nation to heel, an outcome that seems increasingly likely these days?
They couldn’t possibly give President Donald Trump credit, so what would they say?
Even naysayers of the war against Iran are starting to admit that the combination of military and economic attacks on the Iranian regime is paying off. A CNN analysis over the weekend, headlined “No, Iran is not winning: In Act IV of the war, it’s losing its leverage in Hormuz,” says Trump has managed to impose “an effective blockade on Iranian oil shipments, with global shipments recovering and energy prices remaining remarkably stable” while the country’s economy is in shambles, with inflation running at 70% as its GDP falls 5%.
Also this weekend, Newsweek ran an opinion piece arguing that “Iran is facing its Soviet moment and possibly its end.” Author Joseph Epstein goes on to say that the “Islamic Republic is exporting almost no oil, its currency has lost nearly a third of its value since March, and it is rationing water and electricity to its own capital.” Translation: It doesn’t have long to live.
So, again, we ask, how would those suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome explain away a victory in a war they are hoping and praying that Trump will lose?
We considered engaging a soothsayer for guidance, but then realized that the left had already shown its hand in its endless attempts to dismiss Ronald Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War. Drawing on that record, here are our predictions for how the chorus of Trump-haters will react should the war with Iran be won.
Victory was inevitable. After the Cold War ended, the left dismissed Reagan’s role in the collapse of the Soviet Union by saying that his actions had nothing to do with it. The USSR, they said, was a “dying husk” and “was doomed no matter who was in office.” Of course, nobody was saying that at the time, and there was no reason to expect the USSR to fall apart. So, don’t be surprised if the left — after spending the past six months saying Trump was losing the war — suddenly declares that victory was a foregone conclusion.
Trump made the situation worse. Not only did the left dismiss Reagan’s role, it argued that his anti-communist rhetoric, military build-up, fight against Soviet proxies in Central America, Grenada invasion, push for SDI, economic pressure, etc. made things worse. “The antagonism of Reagan’s early presidency likely prolonged the Cold War by elevating hardline, anti-American voices over those of moderate reformers like Gorbachev,” is how one Reagan critic put it. Another chimed in that “such threats possibly allowed these regimes to hold on to power even longer as people rallied to support the government in the face of the perceived American threat.” Don’t be surprised if “experts” say that the Obama-Biden approach of coddling Iran and shipping them pallets of cash would have yielded the same results faster.
Larger forces were at work. Another line of attack against Reagan is that the fall of the Soviet Union was part of a global trend toward democracy. “Soviet-style communism was doomed in part because it fell victim to the pro-democracy movement that was also then sweeping Latin America and parts of Africa and Asia during this same period,” wrote one. What’s more, Reagan had no credibility on this issue because he “was a strong supporter of many of these right-wing dictatorial regimes.” We can see this same line trotted out about Iran. It was pro-democracy forces that won the day, for which Trump — a wannabe dictator who is destroying democracy in the U.S. — deserves no credit.
It’s Iran’s leaders who deserve the credit. Countless “experts” told us that “The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union were primarily the work of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (and his) radically reformist policies.” We’re sure that, somehow, a win against Iran will be credited to “reformers” inside Iran’s government.
Iranians will regret this. When not dismissing Reagan’s role in driving the Soviets off the cliff, leftists were busy trying to convince people that life was better when Communists ran the place. “The Communists produced economic security as robust (and often more so) than that of the richest countries, but with fewer resources and a lower level of development and in spite of the unflagging efforts of the capitalist world to sabotage socialism,” wrote one. You can be sure that there will be stories aplenty about how Trump has left the Iranian people worse off than they were under the murderous, terror-supporting totalitarian government.
This will destabilize the Middle East. Twenty years after the Cold War ended, the far-left Nation magazine ran an article by Mikhail Gorbachev, titled “Is the World Really Safer Without the Soviet Union?” in which the “radical reformer” lamented that “The breakup of the Soviet Union interrupted perestroika — an attempt to effect an evolutionary transition from totalitarianism to democracy,” and that “the world without the Soviet Union has not become safer, more just or more stable. Instead of a new world order … we have had global turmoil, a world drifting in uncharted waters.” We doubt it will take more than 20 minutes for critics of the administration to argue that Trump’s actions have dangerously destabilized the Middle East, making the world less safe for freedom and democracy. In fact, the liberal Brookings Institution already has a website titled “Blowback: How the Iran war may change the world,” where the left imagines various ways the Middle East will be worse off, no matter how the war ends.
This will only embolden an already dangerous president. Reagan was out of office when the Soviet Union collapsed, but that hasn’t stopped people from warning that crediting Reagan will only encourage future leaders to follow in his warmongering footsteps. “Perhaps the most dangerous myth regarding the legacy of the late President Ronald Reagan is that he was somehow responsible for the end of the Cold War,” is how one Reagan-hater put it.
This is incredibly bad for the environment. There aren’t any direct parallels to the 1980s for this claim, but we assume that (after spending six months complaining about how the Iran war pushed up gas prices) we will start hearing how a victory in Iran is a loss for the planet because the resulting low oil prices will only encourage consumption, which will result in more greenhouse gas emissions, and, as we well know, climate change is the real threat to humanity — not insane Islamic radicals armed with nuclear weapons.
As for us, we can only hope that we start hearing these excuses, because it will mean that the U.S. has won the war against Iran — an outcome for which everyone should be hoping and praying.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
P.S.: We invite readers to use the comment section below to add their own predictions of the left’s reaction to a victory in Iran.
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Struan Stevenson
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