Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. What will be the reaction, here and abroad, in the coming days and weeks to the June 21, Saturday night destruction—for all practical purposes—of the Iranian nuclear program by the United States, as ordered by President Donald Trump?
If you look at home, I don’t think the Left is going to have much complaint. I mean, they’re going to try to say that Donald Trump should have had permission from Congress. But after all, Sen. Tim Kaine, he’s the author of the new legislation chastising Trump for this, but he was the head of the Democratic National Committee in 2011 when Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Ben Rhodes urged then-President Barack Obama to bomb Libya. And that was a disastrous decision and there was no congressional authority to grant that.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was in the middle of a reform with his children, and we got rid of him. And then, we were bombing them on and off for the next five years. The last thing that Barack Obama did in office—remember this—on Jan. 19, 2017, he ordered B-2 bombers, just like we saw, all the way over to Libya to bomb Libya. There wasn’t anybody in the Democratic Party that tried to stop that or said that was unconstitutional.
So, the Left has no history of consistency, no logic, no morality on this. And privately, they understand they had no solution to force Iran to give up this bomb. After all, Donald Trump came in in January and all of a sudden, he was told they almost have a bomb. And his first reaction was, “Well, what did former President Joe Biden do? Why did he lift the sanction? Why did he give them $100 billion in new revenue?” So, the Left is going to be inert and quiet, I think.
How about the MAGA Right? Everybody says, “The MAGA Right’s going to defect. Stephen Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens—everybody’s upset—Rand Paul.” They have concerns that this “America First,” MAGA agenda does not want to get into optional wars in the Middle East. But this is not a 1991 preliminary to an invasion, 2003 preliminary to invasion, 2011 preliminary to Gaddafi regime change.
This was a designated, finite act. And now it’s over with and it’s up to Iran to do what it wants. It can either negotiate and become a peaceful presence with peaceful nuclear power or it can continue its terror. But it has no terrorist appendages to hurt us, really. And we’ll see.
But even Tucker Carlson, remember, quite logically said, when he had that fiery exchange with Sen. Ted Cruz, he said, “If I had known that Iran wanted to kill Donald Trump, I would order—I would want somebody to order to bomb Iran.” We now know that the terrorist that was planning to kill Trump is being tried in absentia. He’s in Iran. It’s not in doubt. And so, we bombed Iran.
And where would anybody go? I’m a MAGA supporter. If I was vehemently opposed to this one-off strike, I’d say, “Well, how about illegal immigration? It doesn’t exist anymore. Look at the border. Look at all of these things that Donald Trump has done, like, with the universities, with the tax relief.” So, there was so much of the MAGA agenda that his critics agree with, I don’t think they’re going to be very vehement.
How about abroad? The Europeans were going to be very disturbed. This was not multilateral. The U.N. wasn’t involved. And I can guarantee you they’re calling Donald Trump up right now and saying, “Thank God you did this because we were much closer to Iran than you were. And we were very worried about this crazy regime—according to the Israelis—days away from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
How about the Arab world? The Arab world, before this attack, was very—it was angry at Israel. Remember they said, “The Zionists should not have had a preliminary, preemptive war. This was wrong. It’s disruptive.” And they had a point. They ship oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. But that was the public reaction.
Privately, they were telling the Israelis or the United States, “If you’re going to get rid of the Iranian nuclear threat and neuter that regime, please, please do it. But do it completely. Do not leave this wounded animal in our backyard because we can’t handle it. So, either get rid of it or promise us that you will get rid of it.”
And now, the reaction to this destruction, especially at Fordow, is typical: Express public regret, instability, da, da, da, but private relief.
And then finally, what are China and Russia going to do? Russia, everybody says that Russian President Vladimir Putin is very angry. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has said that he might give nuclear weapons to Iran. I don’t think he’ll do that because the last thing in the world you want is nuclear proliferation because there’s a lot of people in Japan and South Korea and Australia and Taiwan that want nuclear weapons and, unlike the ones in Iran, they will work. And we are doing our best to ensure them they’re all under our umbrella. So, that would be an empty threat and a stupid threat.
But more importantly, Putin is saying, privately, “I’m tied down in Ukraine. I can’t do anything. I’ve lost a million dead and wounded. I’ve been kicked out of the Middle East when I lost the pawn of Bashar Assad. But the fact there’s turmoil in the Middle East and the price of oil will go up benefits me because I’m broke. And this will be very good for my war machine.”
As far as China goes, China’s got the opposite reaction, in one way, but it’s similar: “I don’t want to get involved. Until all this happened, we bought 90% of Iranian oil. I want that oil on the market. And we bought 50% of the oil that left the Strait of Hormuz. I don’t like what happened. But on the other hand, I think that Trump is a little bit too volatile and is a little bit too uncertain and is a little bit too fluid for me. So, I’m going to quiet down and make sure that stability returns to the region and we get our oil.”
And that, finally, that dittos Putin as well. Putin is going to say to everyone in his circle:
There was a reason that I went in under George Bush into Georgia and Ossetia when he was wounded from Iran. There was a reason I went in—Barack Obama. Remember the ‘hot mic deal’ in Seoul? ‘Give me some space, Putin. And this is my last election, and I’ll dismantle missile defense.’ That’s when I went into the Donbas and Crimea. There was a reason—once I saw what happened in Afghanistan—why I went in, during the Biden administration, back in and tried to take Kyiv. I didn’t go in during the Trump administration. And I don’t want to do anything like that again, either, during the second Trump administration. He’s just too unpredictable.
Bottom line: All the critics here and abroad, they’re going to be loud, but I don’t think they’re going to have any consequence.
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