The Volokh Conspiracy
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Bold, perhaps; but not Brave and not Right
Steven Calabresi gets it only half right in his defense of Trump's handling of the Iran war
Steven Calabresi writes, here on the VC, that our President has been "bold, brave, and right," and "done all the right things," in pushing ahead attacking Iran. "We should all be very grateful," he writes, "for President Trump's boldness, bravery, and steadfastness with respect to this war."
Respectfully, I disagree. Trump's Iran policy is, I suppose, "bold." A nuclear attack on Canada would also be "bold," as would aiding and abetting an attack on the US Capitol to prevent election certification, or draining the Rio Grande to make it easier to spot unlawful entrants. Boldness in pursuit of flawed policies and unlawful ends and downright stupidity -- all of which are on display here in the handling of this war -- is not a virtue.
Prof. Calabresi spends most of his time in his essay showing that "Iran is our mortal enemy — that it is a "revolutionary theocracy that wants to pave the way to an entirely Shiite Islamic World," that it is "committed to regime change in the United States," that it "wants to destroy the United States and all that it stands for." And that the possibility that Iran can acquire nuclear weapons is both "appreciable" and "unacceptable."
I happen to agree with him on all that. But that's not the question before us, which is: Given all that - that a nuclear-armed Iran poses an unacceptable risk to our country and to the world - what should we do about it? How do we reach the goal of a non-nuclear Iran? Have our President's actions brought us closer to the goal?
Calabresi begins his defense of Trump's decisions in paragraph 9:
"President Trump wisely bombed Iran's nuclear facilities in June 2025 in the Twelve Day War, but it had become clear by the winter of 2026 that Iran had restarted its nuclear program. Prior to the February 28, 2026 U.S. and Israeli strikes, Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff stated Iran was "probably a week away" from industrial-grade bomb-making material, and President Donald Trump later estimated Iran was "two weeks away" from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
Well, that's just not real persuasive. President Trump, as Prof. Calabresi is surely aware, lies all the time - so frequently that we all have completely ceased to be surprised or alarmed when the latest fabrication comes to light. And I suppose it is possible that Witkoff's long years of experience in real estate law and real estate development have given him a deep understanding of the intricacies of nuclear engineering, but I doubt it. If that's the best (read: only) evidence Calabresi can come up with in support of the argument that development of an Iranian nuclear weapon was imminent, his defense is not off to a good start.
And I guess Prof. Calabresi doesn't see the irony that the decision to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities in June 2025 - President Trump called it a complete obliterat[ion]" - was so "wise" that by the immediately following winter Iran was closer than it had ever been - 2 weeks away! - to developing a nuclear weapon.
"President Trump faced the hardest and bravest decision of his life and of his two terms as President in February of 2026. Should he use the military to destroy Iran's nuclear program, . . . [o]r should President Trump follow the advice of almost all his top advisors and do nothing."
That's a very odd formulation of the decision Trump faced in February 2026. To begin with, does "destroy Iran's nuclear program" just mean a "do-over" of what we did back in June? And was his only option, other than "use of the military to destroy Iran's nuclear program," to "do nothing"?
It was not. Prof. Calabresi omits a very wide variety of alternative options that were on the table in February 2026, ranging from toughening the sanctions to diplomacy and negotiations.
Yes, diplomacy and negotiations. The Soviet Union also wanted to destroy our way of life, and yet from Kennedy-Khrushchev to Reagan-Gorbachev, we found a way to negotiate with them, and the world was a lot better off for our having done so. If Trump was so convinced the Iran Accords were so terrible, perhaps he could have devoted some time to thinking about how a workable multi-lateral enforceable agreement might actually work.
Calabresi continues:
Young advisors like the naïve and inexperienced Vice President, J.D. Vance, the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and most of the top generals in the Department of War took the wrong, over-cautious view. They quite rightly said that going to war to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs would be hard, dangerous, and unpopular work. Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, oil and natural gas prices would rise, and the world's economy, including the U.S. economy, would take a hit. Such a war would be unpredictable, and our European allies would fecklessly decline to help. We would run out of weapons because stockpiles in the U.S. were dangerously low. The war would not be a quick victory like the kidnapping of Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro; it would instead drag on. Trump might even lose the 2026 midterm elections or fail to keep the presidency in Republican hands in 2028. The American people would never understand why war with Iran was necessary when the Afghan and Iraq Wars were not.
Just for the record, there is absolutely no credible evidence of which I am aware that any of these words were ever spoken in Trump's presence, or that Trump ever weighed the options in front of him in this, or any other rational, way. None.
Calabresi applauds Trump's decision to "launch[ ] a knock-out strike on February 28, 2026, that decapitated the Iranian leadership—civilian, theocratic, and military—in a bombing that killed the Supreme Iranian leader (the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), an avowed enemy of the U.S."
How, exactly, did that bring us closer to the goal of a non-nuclear Iran?
The bottom line:
"After five months of war, Iran is further away from building a nuclear bomb than it has been in some time, its economy has been absolutely crushed, its entire Navy has been sunk, its Air Force has been obliterated, and its enormous stockpiles, hidden under ground, of ballistic missiles have been over 90% obliterated.
Note the "in some time" qualifier. But putting that aside, I still have to ask: how does that all, even if it were all true, bring us closer to the goal of a non-nuclear Iran? The cost of this war, across the globe, owing to the rise in energy prices which it precipitated, has been prodigiously high, even without taking into account the spending on armaments or the human cost of the deaths of 18 US soldiers and many thousands of Iranians. I can believe that our military has made life miserable for most Iranians; what I fail to see is why that brings us closer to the goal of a non-nuclear Iran.
I see a war that has no well-formulated exit strategy (on either side), which has delivered a great boon to Iran's new leaders by demonstrating to the Iranian people that they can stand up to the United States and by demonstrating to the world that they have the power to inflict serious damage on Western economies via their control over the Strait of Hormuz. A war which has emboldened Iran's proxies in other countries (e.g., the Houthis) and delivered a serious blow to our allies in the Gulf. A war that for all of the military might on display, has exposed our weakness, while seriously depleting our readiness to engage in other conflicts. And cost a bloody fortune.
