It is a warm spring day in early April, I notice that I am low on gas and pull into a Speedway near my home. Looking at the gas meter after filling my car, I nearly faint at the $56 total. Gas has suddenly risen over 20 percent nationwide, and I wonder what the cause is.
The answer I was looking for lies in the Middle East, specifically the Strait of Hormuz. The strait was closed down by Iran after being struck by Israel and the U.S., but the resulting consequences include 20 percent of the world’s oil supply being cut off and energy prices inflating worldwide. Some Americans are left to wonder if this war is worth it and what the motivations were to begin this conflict.
The justification for this conflict was the claim that the Iranian nuclear program was dangerously close to creating a nuke and that the organized destruction of nuclear facilities and military leaders was necessary to ensure the safety of American and Israeli citizens. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been quoted saying that Iran is a close distance away from developing a nuclear bomb since 1992 when he first announced that they were three to five years away from developing such weapons of mass destruction.
However, there is no evidence that Iran has an active weaponized nuclear program, and the speculative concerns about them developing nukes has been present since the early 1990s, yet they have never been known to possess a nuclear bomb.
Another point that people bring up concerning the war is the avoidability of the entire situation. Example A would be the Iran nuclear deal, a deal that was reached during Obama’s presidency that would have vastly increased the monitoring of Iran concerning their nuclear research and development. This deal would also cut off most uranium supplies to the country while reducing the amount of enriched uranium they were allowed to possess by 98 percent. The deal also ensured that they did not possess any uranium enriched to above 3.67 percent, whereas weapons-grade Uranium is 90 percent enrichment or higher.
This deal allowed Iran to re-enter the economy and released $100 billion frozen assets, stimulating economic growth. Iran was motivated to accept this deal, and were in compliance with the strict terms of the deal. Most would agree that this deal was more than enough to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but Trump terminated this deal just three years after it was accepted.
Trump called this deal “horribly one-sided” and stated that the 10-15 year lifespan of the deal would simply delay Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. Instead of immediately working to reach a better deal, he let the situation in Iran worsen until the problem became impossible for him to ignore. Following Trump’s withdrawal from the deal in 2018, Iran began exceeding their nuclear limits almost immediately. Even before our withdrawal, it was firmly opposed by the Republican party as well as the state of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. It was the Democratic party and European countries — such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom — that supported and negotiated the deal.
Trump has not been able to reach a better deal with Iran. Instead, he attacked them on the basis that they were a threat to the US and Israel though lacking hard evidence. Instead of reaching peace, Trump launched us into a new war. It is true that the Iranian regime is wicked and needs to be replaced, but siding with convicted war criminal Netanyahu to fight another war in the Middle East is not the answer for either the Iranian people or the American people.
