Eli Lake, Columnist

Don’t Blame Trump for Iran’s Aggression

The regime’s leaders are the only ones who should be made to answer for Iran’s campaign of terror.

June 18, 2019 at 5:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Needlessly provocative.
Photographer: ATTA KENARE/AFP

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

As President Donald Trump mulls a comprehensive response to what he says was an Iranian attack on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf last week, his smarter critics are not questioning Iran’s likely culpability. Instead, they are asking, “What did you expect?”

So Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, agreed that evidence of Iran’s responsibility for the attacks is “very strong and compelling.” But he also lamented that Trump had isolated the U.S. from its allies, and how those allies and U.S. intelligence analysts warned “that this kind of Iranian reaction was likely — a result of a policy of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement.”