Opinion
America First Principles
President Trump said Monday what many Americans have been thinking for months. “Iran, militarily, is effectively over,” he told reporters at the White House, AFP reported. “We’re just keeping it the status quo.”
Then he told us whose status quo it is. In a Truth Social post, the president said Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait “would prefer the status quo,” meaning the U.S. naval blockade of Iran and the new “Operation Iron Gate” task force against overland weapons shipments, CNBC reported.
Of course they would. Somebody else’s navy is guarding their neighborhood. The question for an America First foreign policy is simple: if the military job is done, why is the American taxpayer still paying for the Gulf’s preferred arrangement?
The mission was the nuclear threat
The president has been clear about the goal that matters. He repeated Monday that Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, and he kept the option of new strikes if circumstances change, though he called them “quite unlikely,” according to CNBC. That is the right posture: a hard red line, backed by the ability to act, without an open-ended presence.
The war is now in its ninth month. Its purpose was to keep the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism from getting the bomb and to break its ability to threaten Americans. By the president’s own account, Iran’s navy has been destroyed and its economy is hollowed out. A mission that has succeeded should end, not drift into a permanent patrol.
Americans are paying for it at home
The war’s costs are not abstract. Consumer prices rose 0.4% in October, and Bureau of Labor Statistics data show gasoline about 35% more expensive than two years ago and electricity up 18.2% in the Midwest, as The Washington Inquisitor reported today. Chris Phelan, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said higher gas and diesel prices were “filtering through the economy,” NBC News reported.
The president has acknowledged that the war contributed to his party’s losses last week, AFP reported. Voters did not turn on the America First agenda. They turned on the part of the last nine months that looked like the old Washington consensus: open-ended commitments overseas, paid for by working families at home.
The good news is that relief is already visible. Oil fell sharply on Monday and Tuesday on the prospect of de-escalation, with U.S. crude near $86 a barrel and Brent near a 10-week low, CNBC reported. The national average for regular gasoline fell below $4 a gallon on Tuesday for the first time since July, according to NBC News. Imagine what a clear end to the war would do.
Let the Gulf carry its own weight
My colleague on this page wants a grand multilateral settlement: inspections co-signed by Europe, staged sanctions relief, a shared regime for the Strait of Hormuz, and a “bigger and more formal role” for the Gulf states. He is right about that last part, and I welcome it. Where we differ is on who pays and who commands.
The Gulf monarchies are among the wealthiest countries on earth. They buy the most advanced weapons America makes. If they want the blockade, they can help man it, finance it and, over time, take it over. If they want the strait open, their navies can escort their own tankers. That is not abandoning allies. It is asking allies to act like allies.
I am also skeptical of a deal written to please international institutions. Iran’s reported proposal, delivered through Qatari mediators, asks for sanctions relief and a new shipping route through Hormuz, CNBC reported, citing Reuters. Meanwhile its security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, publicly mocks the idea that talks exist, according to AFP. A regime that cannot admit it is negotiating has not earned sanctions relief on a schedule set in Brussels or Geneva. Any relief should be narrow, tied to verified nuclear limits, and revocable by the United States alone.
Hawks will warn that stepping back invites Tehran to rebuild. That risk is real. The answer is the one the president already gave: a standing promise that America is “locked and loaded” if Iran crosses the nuclear line. Deterrence comes from credibility, not from parking a carrier group in the Gulf forever.
Energy independence is the real security
The deeper lesson of this war is that America’s cost of living should never again hinge on a strait nearly 7,000 miles away. Every barrel of oil and every cubic foot of gas produced here at home, and every kilowatt of new American power, is a little less leverage for Tehran and the Gulf alike.
The president has the momentum, as he put it. He should declare the mission accomplished on the nuclear threat, hand the regional guard duty to the region, and bring the focus home, where the voters just told Washington it belongs.
Wade Harlan is the pen name of a Washington Inquisitor opinion columnist writing from an American nationalist perspective. The views expressed are the author’s own and not those of The Washington Inquisitor.
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