Even since a cease-fire was announced between the U.S. and Iran, anti-Trump extremists have been accusing President Trump of “war crimes” for his original attack. This is nonsense.

Trump reasonably and understandably believed Iran was close to developing a nuclear arsenal, which the mullahs might have deployed against Israel in the near term, and perhaps eventually against the U.S.

Regardless of whether the potential timing of this threat fits the traditional definition of “imminent” — which is to say, right on the verge of happening — it was real and would have been catastrophic if carried out. Accordingly, both the U.S. and Israel had the right — indeed, the obligation — to regard the threat that Iran would soon develop and deploy a nuclear arsenal as sufficiently dangerous to warrant preventive military action. Had either country waited until this nuclear threat was truly imminent, it might have been too late to stop it.

We can say this from experience. We waited too long with regard to North Korea, and that rogue nation managed to develop a nuclear arsenal under our noses. As a consequence, the Hermit Kingdom has been constantly threatening the world, and we can do nothing about it.

Iran, the world’s top state exporter of terrorism, would pose a far more serious near-term threat than even North Korea.

Even the United Nations, in its 2004 report on “threats, challenges and change,” acknowledged that even a non-imminent threat of nuclear annihilation by a hostile country might justify preventive military action under the right circumstances. As the former foreign minister of Australia, Gareth Evans, who served on the panel, put it, “The classic non-threat imminent situation is early-stage acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by a state presumed to be hostile.”

It was such a justification that Israel used to preemptively destroy both Iraq’s and Syria’s nuclear weapons programs before their threats became imminent. An even stronger case can be made regarding Iran’s nuclear arsenal program, since Iran has threatened to use it against Israel — which its leaders have called “a one bomb state” — and might well threaten to use it against other nations as well. Once Iran obtains a nuclear arsenal, it will already be too late for prevention or preemption.

Iran would not hesitate to drop a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv, as evidenced by its repeated targeting of Israeli metropolitan centers. But Israel would never retaliate by using nuclear weapons against Tehran, for two reasons: First, Israel never has and will never target an enemy’s large cities with a nuclear holocaust. The late hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, whose family was killed in the Holocaust, put it well in discussing a scenario involving a nuclear strike by Iraq: “That is not our morality. … The children of Baghdad are not our enemy.”

The same would be true of the current Israeli leadership and the children of Tehran, many of whose parents are strongly opposed to its current regime.

Second, were Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal, a strike against it may also entail the release of enormous amounts of radiation in many parts of Iran.

Israel therefore has no choice but to act preventively instead of reactively. Iran knows that Israel cannot deter its use of nuclear weapons by merely threatening retaliation against Tehran.

Professor Michael Walzer, who generally opposes military actions except as a last resort, put it well. “The Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 is sometimes invoked as an example of a justified preventive attack that was also, in a sense, preemptive,” he wrote in September 2022. “The Iraqi threat was not imminent, but an immediate attack was the only reasonable action against it.”

According to other reasonable scholars, the justification for a preventive or preemptive attack involves more than merely the temporal immediacy of the threat itself; it is a function of the temporal opportunity for carrying out the preventive action, as well as the seriousness and irremediability of a nuclear attack against its civilian population. This view was reflected by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who initially condemned Israel’s attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor but went on to praise it years later.

The same was true of Kevin Adelman, part of the American delegation when the United Nations condemned Israel. He subsequently regarded the Israeli attack as “the most wonderful example of preemption in the modern era. … Thank God Israel did that, looking back at it. The idea of Saddam Hussein being the main Arab leader with nuclear weapons since 1985 is frightful.”

The decision of whether to engage in preventive military action against the impending development of a hostile nuclear arsenal requires a balance of at least three factors. The first is the likelihood that the enemy would soon develop and possibly deploy a nuclear arsenal; the second is the degree of harm that be caused by such deployment; and the third is the reasonable expectation that setting back this threat for a considerable period of time is feasible militarily, or in combination with war-ending diplomacy.

In this case, all three of these criteria have been met, even if the existential threat was not so immediate as to categorize it as “imminent.”

The 25th Amendment provides a complex mechanism for removing a president who is unable to perform his duties because of illness or other incapacity. It was not designed for resolving political disagreements with a sitting president. Its legislative history is clear. Yet some radical democrats are threatening to invoke it in response to President Trump’s actions toward Iran. This would violate both the text and intention of the Constitution.

These partisans know that under current law only the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can invoke its provisions transferring power to the vice president for as long as the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” They know that this president is perfectly able to discharge his duties; they just don’t approve of the way he is discharging them.

They also know that the framers of the 25th Amendment did not intend it to apply to political differences over policy; it was designed as a neutral, non-partisan guardrail to be invoked in the event a president suffers a stroke or develops Alzheimer’s disease or some other objectively diagnosable mental or physical disability.

Weaponizing this safeguard for partisan advantage, as some Democrats are now seeking to do, weakens it and guarantees that the other side will try to weaponize it as well.

Knowing that it has no chance of currently succeeding against one of the most active and in-your-face presidents in history, why are these partisan Democrats deploying this particular weapon from an arsenal that includes so many more potentially effective tools? Because other partisan ploys have failed.

During President Trump’s first term, a Democratic majority in the house voted to impeach him, in violation of the text of the Constitution, which limits impeachment to “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” That impeachment resolution did not allege any of those crimes, instead it invoked broad, meaningless phrases such as abuse of power and contempt of Congress, criteria which the framers rejected and of which many former presidents have been accused. I argued successfully against the Senate removing President Trump on those unconstitutional grounds.

Having failed in their misuse of the impeachment provision of the Constitution, some of these same Democrats now seek to misuse the 25th Amendment for partisan political purposes. That too will fail, because the amendment provides safeguards that would make it virtually impossible to invoke against President Trump at this time.

The Democrats who are knowingly abusing the constitution understand that their threats have no chance of succeeding, but they don’t care, because their goal is simply to make political points by seeking to embarrass President Trump with false claims that he is somehow unable to continue to serve, suggesting – and in some instances saying – that he is mentally ill, senile or demented. They know, as anyone who has met with the president knows, that to the contrary, he is on top of his game, willing and able to answer media questions and to give as good as he gets. He is among the most energetic and confrontational presidents in history. That is precisely why they want to get rid of him. 

They are simply lying in order to contrive a phony political case under the cover of the 25th Amendment. They seek to equate disagreement over policies and actions with incapacity to govern. Such an equation would gut the 25th Amendment as an important part of our institutional system of checks and balances,

Nor should they be allowed to get away with their deliberate abuse of the constitution, without themselves paying a political price. Crying wolf about the 25th Amendment threatens to weaken its use in situations for which it was intended. Turning it into a partisan weapon instead of its intended role as neutral safeguard against a physically or mentally incapacitated president, will make it difficult, if not impossible, to invoke successfully in cases of actual incapacity. If one side misuses the amendment to try to turn a competent president out of office, the other side will misuse it to keep an incompetent president in office.

We have experienced presidential incapacity in our history. Near the end of his second term, Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke, and his wife reportedly made some important presidential decisions. There are questions about Ronald Regan’s Alzheimer’s and when it began. As presidents continue to serve into their 70s and 80s, the likelihood of a truly incapacitated president increases. And incapacity is often a matter of degree and development over time. That is why it is imperative to maintain the 25th Amendment as a neutral, non-partisan guardrail against a president who is objectively unable to do his job, without regard to politics.

The Democrats who are now trying to misuse that important guardrail of governance must be stopped before they cause irreparable damage to our constitutional system of checks and balances. Cooler heads within their party must make it clear that the leadership of that party does not support this unconstitutional ploy, which could someday be misused against a Democratic president, as some Republicans tried to do against President Joe Biden. The 25th Amendment is like the axe in the glass case marked: “For emergency use only.”

The Straits of Hormuz are now temporarily open pursuant to the cease fire agreement.

But if no final agreement is reached during this hiatus, Iran can again threaten to close them to ships from nations unfriendly to them, as it did over the past several weeks.

Iran may have the military power to close the straits of Hormuz to all shipping, but it shouldn’t have the power to decide who can go through and who cannot.

The United States should declare that if Iran were again to close the straits to some ships, the U.S. would close it to all ships.

In other words, Iran has the power to decide to close the straits, but it does not have the power to keep it open to selectively itself and its friends.

The U.S. has the power, through a military blockade, to close the straits to all shipping, including Iran’s.

Such a total closure would require all the shippers of Gulf oil to find alternative ways of getting it to its customers.

Such efforts are already underway.

Closing the straits to Iranian-approved ships unless Iran opens it to all ships would raise the price of oil in the short term, but lower and stabilize it in the long term, as oil producing companies find alternative routes and deny Iran the power to raise prices by closing one route that accounts for 20% of oil shipments.

Iran’s closure of the straits to some shipping is clearly illegal, since the straits are an international waterway with open access to all.

Iran has chosen to engage in illegal action by blocking the straits to some.

It would be entirely lawful for the United States to respond to Iran’s illegality by closing the straits to all and conditioning its reopening on Iran’s agreement not to pick and choose who can use this international waterway.

This would be tough justice, because those countries now allowed through the straits would be denied access.

But Iran has no right – as a matter of law, policy or morality – to decide who is and is not allowed to use this international waterway.

A partial blockade can be responded to by a total blockade.

The biggest loser would of course be Iran itself, which would be denied the payments it is now getting for its selective permissions.

It would also be denied its own use of the straits to transport its own oil.

Although Iran does not need the straits to transport its oil, since it has access to other waterways to its south, it will still be hurt financially.

That would be a good thing.

I’m not an economist and so it’s possible that I’m not considering all the economic ramifications of such a closure, but on its face, it seems like a good idea for the U.S. to impose an all or nothing condition on the use of the straits: all go through, or nothing goes through.

There is also the military option to reopen the Straits and keep it open by force.

But that too has problems.

All it takes is one attack, or even threat, to deter ships from going through.

Closing the Straits by military force or threats is much easier than opening them.

So why not try the all-or-nothing economic threat before deploying the uncertain military and dangerous military option.

If that doesn’t work, the military option is always available.

It’s possible, of course, that Iran will decide to keep the straits open to all – at least soon.

But it can always change its mind and close it again on a selective basis.

That is a good reason for the U.S. to announce now that it will never allow Iran to pick and choose who is allowed through.

The all-or-none policy will deter Iran from doing what it did during the recent military action. It will also show the world that Iran does not alone control the Straits of Hormuz.