Iran And The Day After

So President Trump has just addressed the nation. He informs us that when Iran bombarded our bases a while back, we lost no men or women. The betting is that the Mullahs have decided avenging Qasem Soleimani isn’t worth the costs of a full-scale military confrontation with a Superpower. He notes that Iran appears to be “standing down.”

But there is something odd about all this. First, we don’t know, yet, that Iran is really “standing down,” and we won’t know for quite some time. Second, that Iran may back away from the situation now doesn’t mean it won’t hold a grudge. It is possible that at some unspecified point in the future, perhaps when we least expect it, the nation will strike at us with the cry “Remember Soleimani!”

Third, there is a curious sense of relief in Trump’s announcement. It feels like a school yard bully who has just pushed the toughest kid in class from behind, and then …with a shudder!…realizes what he has done. When the other boy simply sneers and turns away, the bully exhales and, after a few moments of shaking in terror, announces that he’s won.

But, fourth, and finally, we have (I think) suffered a significant defeat in the eyes of the world. For here’s the thing. No matter what happens now, humanity will look at us and note that it was Iran, not the United States, who handled this affair with restraint.
 

 ~mjt




Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

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Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)



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