Now that we are two weeks into the conflict with Iran, we still have no exit strategy, and we aren’t any closer to figuring out why the American people should even want this war.
We are still going with the official story that we don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons, even though our Director of National Intelligence testified under oath that their nuclear capabilities were completely wiped out after our attacks on them last year.
Also, we do nothing about North Korea, who hates us and still very much has nukes that can reach us easily, so that disproves the nuclear Iran theory itself.
As far as regime change goes, Iran’s new Ayatollah is the son of the original one, except this one has lost most of this family in the past few weeks and is likely to be much more radicalized against us because of it.
Which means even more bloodshed.
We aren’t blameless, either. We sent two missiles into a girl’s elementary school and killed 168 people. We also broke the Geneva Convention’s rules by striking desalination plants in Iran, which is how their citizens get 90% of their drinking water.
And in response, they have seriously damaged at least 17 of our military sites and damaged half of our critical missile defense radars. The Strait of Hormuz is a disaster. And instead of backing down and cutting our losses, since this war was never on behalf of the American people, we are now moving one of our only remaining THAAD radar to the Middle East, leaving less for us to use for our own defense.
Iran’s entire strategy is banking on the numbers that they can produce 10,000 drones a month for an estimated $20k-$50k each, while our Patriot missiles that we use to intercept those drones cost 4 to 5 million each, and they take way longer to make. We are burning through our limited stockpile quickly, which is not a good thing.
In fact, the US has actually managed to spend $93 billion in one month on this war, which is an unsustainable amount of resources to help out a foreign country, and also paint ourselves as a target on their behalf.
Which brings me to the elephant in the room.
Why are we doing all of this for a foreign country?
Our Secretary of State claimed that we only attacked Iran while we were still in the middle of negotiations because we knew Israel was planning an attack, so we essentially got forced into this like a dog on a leash, because we knew that they would target American bases if Israel attacked them.
This pattern of volatility was also seen during the Gaza conflict, where Israel repeatedly broke ceasefires to strike first. Except Iran is a very different country, with allies and capabilities that Gaza did not have.
Our ambassador to Israel is the former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee. In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, he was asked about the area between the Nile and the Euphrates rivers, which encompasses a large part of the Middle East. Huckabee stated “it would be fine if [Israel] took it all”, which is a horrifying answer, but it isn’t a unique idea at all. In fact, it’s a sentiment said frequently throughout Israel.
I think it’s time to admit that our interests are no longer aligned with the aspirations of conquest that Israel has, and cut our losses. This was never our war to fight, and Iran’s strategy to cause us to bankrupt ourselves is extremely effective and has a chance at leaving us without the stockpile to defend our own country, should anyone try to harm us. It’s time to put America first and end this war.
Taryn Ogletree is a local small business owner and author with previous experience of several years in finance.