The vice presidential debate on Tuesday night opened with a question that might as well have been a pitch for war with Iran. Both Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) dodged it, attacking each other's foreign policy records as weak while refusing to commit to any concrete action on Iran.
"Earlier today, Iran launched its largest attack yet on Israel, but that attack failed, thanks to joint U.S. and Israeli defensive action….Iran is weakened, but the U.S. still considers it the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and it has drastically reduced the time it would take to develop a nuclear weapon. It is down now to one or two weeks' time," CBS moderator Margaret Brennan said. "Gov. Walz, if you were the final voice in the Situation Room, would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?"
Brennan was wrong on two counts. The Iranian missile attack, which Iran said was retaliation for Israeli assassinations over the past few months, hit some of the Israeli military bases that it targeted. And although Iran could accumulate enough enriched uranium for a bomb within a few weeks—probably what Brennan was referring to—the U.S. government believes that it would take months longer to actually assemble a working weapon.
Despite the framing, Brennan asked an important question. The next president may well have to choose between bombing Iran or letting the Iranian nuclear program continue toward weaponization. Neither candidate answered clearly. It's no wonder why. While Americans are worried (and somewhat confused) about an Iranian bomb, the prospect of another full-on war is still unpopular.
"What's fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter," Walz said, launching into a tirade about former President Donald Trump's "fickleness" towards allies and his "dangerous" leadership on issues that had nothing to do with Iran. "We will protect our forces and our allied forces, and there will be consequences," Walz added.
Vance countered that "Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence." He accused the Biden administration of allowing Iran to receive "over $100 billion in unfrozen assets."
Like Brennan, Vance had his statistics confused. Although the Biden administration has allowed Iran to move some of its own money out of foreign bank accounts, it doesn't amount to nearly $100 billion; instead, the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies got that number by adding revenue from Iranian oil sales that the U.S. allegedly failed to stop.
"Now, you asked about a preemptive strike, Margaret, and I want to answer the question," Vance concluded. "Look, it is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe, and we should support our allies wherever they are when they're fighting the bad guys."
Somewhat surprisingly, both candidates also defended diplomacy during their exchange. "Diplomacy is not a dirty word," Vance said, promising "effective, smart diplomacy and peace through strength." And Walz praised the Obama administration's deal to restrict Iranian nuclear activities in exchange for allowing Iran to access foreign markets.
But Walz also echoed the Democratic Party's attacks on Trump for not bombing Iran during previous clashes. "When Iran shot down an American aircraft in international airspace, Donald Trump tweeted," he said, referring to a June 2019 incident, in which Iran shot down a U.S. drone and Trump canceled a planned retaliation. "And when Iranian missiles did fall near U.S. troops, and they received traumatic brain injuries. Donald Trump wrote it off as headaches," Walz continued, referring to the January 2020 near-war between the U.S. and Iran.
It was a far cry from Democrats' line in 2020, when they were willing to talk seriously about the risks of war and criticize Trump for being too cavalier with it. Doing that today, of course, would put Democrats in an awkward position. For all the Biden administration's talk about de-escalation, White House adviser Brett McGurk has been quietly encouraging Israel to escalate against Iran's allies, according to Politico.
Rather than politicians from either party, it has come down to the U.S. military to level with the public about the issues at stake. In December 2021, then-Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr. gave a surprisingly blunt interview to The New Yorker about Iran's "ability to overwhelm" U.S. troops with missile "overmatch," and the "bloody war" that could result. "We would be hurt very badly," he said. "We would win in the long run. But it would take a year."
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