Eliot Cohen, a contributor’s writer to The Atlanticis a military historian and the founder of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Save). Cohen has written many books on military history and strategy, but is perhaps best known for his passionate support for the American invasion of Iraq, which he pleaded in favor of many, both at the end of the nineteen years, when he was a member of the project for the new reflection group of the American century, with Bill Kristol, John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz and after 9 years. In the last years of the George W. Bush administration, Cohen served in the State Department under Condoleezza rice. Since then, he has become a so-called conservative Trump, regularly attacking the president while continuing to plead for a bellicist foreign policy.
Before President Donald Trump’s order to strike Iran last weekend, Cohen published an article in The Atlantic Pushing for American participation and applauding the fact that Trump seemed to go to a military attack. “Although it can badly admit his detractors, in this case, he acts, if not conventionally, then as a statesman of a Trumpian stamp distinctly,” wrote Cohen. Cohen followed this part with another article, which ran The Atlantic On Sunday, after the strike, entitled “Trump obtained this one”. He explained: “Trump understood this one, doing what his predecessors lacked the intestinal force (or, to be fair, the promising opportunity) to do. He spoke with the brutal clarity necessary to cope with a cruel and dangerous diet.”
I recently talked by phone with Cohen about his case for American military action and his history of support for a proactive American role in the Middle East. During our conversation, which was published for duration and clarity, we also discussed his skepticism about an American intelligence assessment saying that Trump’s strike did only reject the Iranian nuclear program in a few months, his 7th post-October trip to the Gaza Strip, and the lessons he did and do not hold the war in Iraq.
What did you do with how Trump managed Iran in last week, from the strike to the push of a ceasefire?
I was in favor of the strike and I gave him credit. As you know, I was as fiercely a critic of him as we can be. I think I may have been the original Never Traupper, but I think that on this one, it has done the right thing, because it was a problem to brew for a very long time, and no administration, including the one of which I was part, could really face it. He took an opportunity. In terms of damage assessments, my feeling about this, for a lot of reasons, is that it is far too early to say. But the strike was remarkably well done. Trump being Trump, he immediately claimed the credit for erased the nuclear program. We don’t know that. And he claimed the merit of having brought peace, which I doubt a lot. But many of us, including close friends, hate the guy, and they are forced to recognize a good decision and a desirable result.
You said that other administrations had not been able to “face” this problem. Do you feel like Trump has dealt with the problem?
I think he did much more than the other administrations. We do not know how much damage has been caused by American strikes, but the Israelis were caused by the Israelis in their secret action, their air strikes and American strikes. What I think people have missed is that he really created a precedent for the use of American military power to go after the Iranian nuclear program. It’s really important. We have tried sanctions and negotiations, and they can, to a certain extent, slow down the program, but I think it is very clear that the Iranians continue.
What did you do with Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director, saying in March that the Iranian supreme chief, the Ayatollah Khamenei, had not authorized to move forward with the production of a bomb, and that the American spy agencies agreed with this conclusion?
What I do is the same thing I made of his statements that Bashar al-Assad was not such a mean. It is a nut case that has no particular understanding of the realities of the situation. She is one of the many people who should never have been appointed to this position. If [C.I.A. director] John Ratcliffe said that I would have taken it more seriously because it is not a case of nuts.
We have no reason to believe that she was lying about what the community of American intelligence believed largely, isn’t it?
We have no reason to believe that it was [telling the truth]. And, by the way, the American intelligence community has fairly mixed history on this subject. Intelligence is always difficult. Second, on this one, they have an uneven record. Third, the Israelis had a much better record than us and they are motivated because the Iranians want to exterminate them. So, between the strangeness and the lack of reliability of Tulsi Gabbard on the one hand and the file of our intelligence community on the other hand, I do not take anything that she says seriously.
I only said that we have no reason to think that the intelligence community had reached a different conclusion.
We don’t know if she gave it precisely what people said. We do not know that it was actually a consensual position. [On June 19th, the Times reported that it remains the consensus position of the intelligence community that Iran has not yet decided whether to pursue the manufacture of nuclear bombs; senior officials also told the newspaper that Iran was likely to move toward it if the United States attacked.] It would be a big mistake to think that high -level judgments are not made by annoying what you think that political leaders can make you like or do not like. It was the experience I had in government. So you know, the intelligence world is troubled. It’s a troubled world. There are exceptional people there and there are other people who have political opinions and act on them.
You just said that you did not know how much damage was caused by American strikes on Saturday. You also wrote on Sunday, “for a period – five years, maybe 10 – Iran will have no nuclear option.” Did you have a reason to use these figures, or if you were just speculated? THE Times And other points of sale have recently reported, on the basis of a preliminary report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, that the strike seems to have made the program back down until “a few months”.
It was a preliminary evaluation of the DIA which is not shared by the Israelis. If you look at the Israeli press, you will see that this is not the Israeli sight. [After Trump began an extraordinary attack on the media for reporting on the D.I.A. assessment, and defended his claim that the Iranian nuclear sites had been “obliterated,” Ratcliffe released an assessment saying that the American strikes had “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear program. The Times also reported, on Wednesday, that, according to U.S. government officials, “should Iran decide to move quickly to get a bomb, it is unlikely to use the facilities struck in the American attack but probably has much of the raw materials and know-how needed to continue.”]
I led the Air Force study on the First Gulf War. And even as six months or a year later, we are still arguing on bombs damage assessments. It is a very difficult task. It is therefore too early to know exactly what was the result of Fordo’s strikes in particular.
