Why Didn’t the Dog Bark: Trump Fails To Mention Iran in a Major Address on the World Stage

One of the most significant features of President Trump’s long address at Davos Wednesday is the omission of Iran from the world’s hotspots mentioned in the speech. Is the unrest on Iranian streets off the president’s radar now, or is he, uncharacteristically, speaking softly while carrying a big stick?Mr. Trump rarely shies away from addressing any topic that pops up in his mind. Yet in a speech that clocked at an hour and 15 minutes, and then in an additional 15 minute interview on the stage, the Islamic Republic never came up. The top headline, instead, was a vow to refrain from using force to annex Greenland. Mr. Trump later also announced an end of punitive tariffs against Europe for objecting to his Greenland moves. It seems that despite Mr. Trump’s endless talk about Greenland in recent weeks, America refrained from moving significant military assets toward the Arctic circle. Europeans, in contrast, carried a joint military exercise on Greenland to deter America from invading. Perhaps that was the cue for Mr. Trump to take the military option off the table. At the same time, American F-15E jet fighters landed in Jordan on Sunday. The United States Ship Abraham Lincoln, an air carrier, is sailing to the Persian Gulf from the South China Sea. Destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, and electronic-jamming aircraft are part of the Lincoln strike group. Patriot batteries and other air defense systems are also being rushed to the region. Mr. Trump cancelled a military strike on Iran last week, reportedly under pressure from Gulf countries and Israel, which were unprepared to defend against a possible counter attack from the Islamic Republic. Israeli military industries are now pushing back against those reports. An urgent uptick in manufacturing, they say, has successfully produced enough systems to defend the country against up to 700 ballistic missiles. That is more than the 500 salvos that Iran launched at Israel during the war last June.Putting further doubt on Israel’s reported lobbying against a strike is Jerusalem’s long declared goal of ending the Islamic Republic regime, which etched the enmity to the Jewish state in its ideology. “Strategic cost-benefit assessment in Jerusalem remains fundamentally unchanged,” YNet is reporting. “In the view of Israeli decision-makers, if a military operation could lead to the collapse of the Iranian regime, the price would not only be acceptable but worthwhile.” The calculation of the Gulf countries might be different. Saudi Arabia has increased diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic in recent years. The Kingdom has long considered stability a pillar of its foreign policy. It also fears the uncertainty of a regime change. Mostly, it remembers Iranian strikes in 2019 against its oil facilities. Both Riyadh and Doha, the latter of which hosts America’s largest airbase in the region at Qatar’s Al-Udeid, reportedly leaned on Mr. Trump to cancel strikes against Iran.White House advisers are reportedly also cautioning the president that there is no quick fix that could collapse the regime and prevent an uncertain future afterwards. Mr. Trump is ordering the Pentagon to prepare plans for a more “decisive” action than was earlier considered, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. Mr. Trump’s earlier inclination — “I’m not interested in regime change” — has changed. “It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,” he told Politico over the weekend. Responding to taunts and personal attacks from Tehran, the president called the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, a “sick man.” Earlier Mr. Trump had drawn a red line on regime violence against protesters. Not acting on it could invite comparisons to President Obama, who declined to act when a Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, used chemical weapons against protesters. Perception of weakness could also embolden America’s adversaries to challenge Mr. Trump around the globe. Mr. Trump has raised the volume in recent weeks on his insistence that America needs to own Greenland. Yet the closest he got to threatening an invasion there was in a refusal to take the military option off the table — and now he has. “I won’t use force,” he told the crowd at Davos Wednesday. He has not made such a statement on Iran. Nor, for that matter, did he speak of Iran at all Wednesday in one of his most watched speeches internationally. Does it mean that military action in Iran is contemplated? As Arthur Conan Doyle observed once, mark the absence of a barking dog.

Why Didn’t the Dog Bark: Trump Fails To Mention Iran in a Major Address on the World Stage

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