The U.S. should not go to war with Iran

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A take I haven’t written elsewhere

The U.S. should not go to war with Iran

(via)

I do not write about foreign policy as much as I once did. I still pen a newsletter for Defense Priorities, and occasionally I’ll do something for Christianity Today on war or peace or both. But my direct attention to U.S. foreign policy is lower than it’s been in years—certainly much less than when I was writing regularly at The Week or Reason or turning out five to 10 Defense Priorities op-eds a month about U.S. policy on Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, and Syria.

A lot of that shift is about U.S. drawdowns from the Middle East, though I hasten to note that we still have around 2,500 troops in Iraq, nearly 1,000 in Syria, and more than 40,000 across the region, with more on the way. And some of the shift is about me, because how many times can you say the same thing a slightly different way?

But this week’s events warrant saying anew: The United States should not go to war with Iran.