Follow us on social

kamala harris

No, Iran isn't America's 'greatest adversary'

VP Harris might have been trying to score points, but her comments are absurd. Here's why.

Analysis | Washington Politics

During a recent interview with 60 Minutes, Vice President Kamala Harris said that Iran is the United States’ greatest adversary. “Iran has American blood on its hands, okay?” she said, adding that Iran also attacked Israel with 200 ballistic missiles.

Iran of course does have American blood on its hands. The Iranian leadership helped kill hundreds of American service members who were sent to a ruinous war in Iraq that sprang from the fever dreams of Harris supporter Dick Cheney. But beyond that morally righteous but strategically irrelevant point, Harris’s argument is absurd.

Iran is a regional power in the Middle East, which itself is a poor, weak region that the United States would do well to stay out of.

As to the threat posed by Iran, let’s begin with the basics. Iran has no missiles that can reach the United States. It has no ability to project conventional military power outside its borders. Its military doctrine is based on defense-in-depth, which involves slowly ceding ground to an aggressor while seizing on opportunities to counterattack. As the last Defense Intelligence Agency report on Iran’s military capabilities put it, “Iran’s ‘way of war’ emphasizes the need to avoid or deter conventional conflict while advancing its security objectives in the region, particularly through propaganda, psychological warfare, and proxy operations.”

This is not the Wehrmacht in 1940. Avoiding or deterring conventional conflict while pursuing security objectives in your region through propaganda, psychological warfare, and proxy operations isn’t the path to dominating the Middle East, much less becoming the greatest threat to the United States.

If you wanted to posit any Middle Eastern power as being the United States’ greatest adversary, you’d have to portray it as a country that could at least dominate its region. From well before the Carter Doctrine, U.S. defense planners have worried that a hegemon in the Middle East would have outsized influence over oil markets and could wreak havoc on the world price for oil.

Iran has no shot at dominating the Middle East because its outdated and under-maintained armor, its towed artillery, and its lack of experience with offensive combined arms preclude it. Were Iran crazy enough to try to invade a neighbor, stand-off air power could destroy the attacking force without much struggle.

These massive conventional military weaknesses — which are not fixable in the policy-relevant future — preclude Iran from trying to dominate the region. And an Iran that cannot dominate its region cannot constitute the biggest threat to the United States.

Iran does, of course, have a vehemently anti-American ideology, and does support an array of proxies across the region that stymie U.S. objectives. In that sense, dotting the region with defenseless U.S. deployments that do not contribute to achievable military objectives, serving only as triggers for war with Iran and facilitators for Israeli strikes into Syria, seems foolhardy.

The closer the United States gets to Iran, the more Iran can hurt Americans. Iraq was a trivial threat to the United States until we invaded it, which made it into a much bigger problem. Bashing a hornet’s nest or dancing around a pit of quicksand pose real dangers, but as in those cases, the best option vis-à-vis Iran is to simply stay away.

The best defense that can be mounted of Vice President Harris in this context is that she seemed to be groping around for an answer with the least political downside and the least offense to the foreign policy Blob, and she probably found it. The problem is that she is wrong on the substance. Should her extemporaneous remark influence her policy, it could push the United States further down the road to ruin in the Middle East.


Top image credit: screen grab www.youtube.com/@60minutes
Analysis | Washington Politics
Kim Jong Un
Top photo credit: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the construction site of the Ragwon County Offshore Farm, North Korea July 13, 2025. KCNA via REUTERS

Kim Jong Un is nuking up and playing hard to get

Asia-Pacific

President Donald Trump’s second term has so far been a series of “shock and awe” campaigns both at home and abroad. But so far has left North Korea untouched even as it arms for the future.

The president dramatically broke with precedent during his first term, holding two summits as well as a brief meeting at the Demilitarized Zone with the North’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Unfortunately, engagement crashed and burned in Hanoi. The DPRK then pulled back, essentially severing contact with both the U.S. and South Korea.

keep readingShow less
Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one
Top photo credit: U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Brad Cooper speaks to guests at the IISS Manama Dialogue in Manama, Bahrain, November 17, 2023. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one

Middle East

If accounts of President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities this past month are to be believed, the president’s initial impulse to stay out of the Israel-Iran conflict failed to survive the prodding of hawkish advisers, chiefly U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Michael Kurilla.

With Kurilla, an Iran hawk and staunch ally of both the Israeli government and erstwhile national security adviser Mike Waltz, set to leave office this summer, advocates of a more restrained foreign policy may understandably feel like they are out of the woods.

keep readingShow less
Putin Trump
Top photo credit: Vladimir Putin (Office of the President of the Russian Federation) and Donald Trump (US Southern Command photo)

How Trump's 50-day deadline threat against Putin will backfire

Europe

In the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonstrated his love for three things: deals, tariffs, and ultimatums.

He got to combine these passions during his Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday. Only moments after the two leaders announced a new plan to get military aid to Ukraine, Trump issued an ominous 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. “We're going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don't have a deal within 50 days,” Trump told the assembled reporters.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.