Susan Rice: How Did We Get 10 Minutes From War With Iran?
President Trump’s process of ordering and then canceling military strikes was a mess. But he now has an opening to restart talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
By Susan E. Rice
Ms. Rice, a contributing opinion writer, was the national security adviser from 2013 to 2017.
If President Trump is to be believed, the United States just came within 10 minutes of launching war against Iran. Make no mistake, these would not have been pinprick strikes that Iran simply swallowed. They would have marked the beginning of a costly war that put tens of thousands of American service members in the Gulf, our regional partners and Israel directly at risk, while shocking the global economy by choking off shipping through the vital Strait of Hormuz.
Never mind. Mr. Trump claims to have thought better of it. At the last minute, he decided that killing an estimated 150 Iranians was a disproportionate response to the downing of an unmanned American drone, which just might have strayed briefly into Iranian airspace. Let’s stipulate that this 11th-hour decision was correct and far better than the alternative.
But the risk of war remains real.
How on earth did we find ourselves 10 minutes from an idiotic war without the president having weighed the consequences? As a former national security adviser who has participated in many decisions about whether and when to use force, I am more certain than ever that our national security decision-making process is dangerously dysfunctional.
Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/opinion/trump-iran-nuclear-weapons.html
Not a bad read, I certainly don't agree with all of it.
