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Experts' Iran War Assumptions Proven Wrong
(Fox News) Victoria Coates - According to conventional wisdom about foreign policy in Washington, it was assumed that the following would be inevitable if the U.S. and/or Israel were to take significant military action against Iran: 1) Iran's supreme leader would be untouchable. 2) The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would deploy its terrorist proxies to ignite a regional war. 3) Israel would be isolated in the Middle East and vulnerable to attack from Arab neighbors. 4) The U.S. would be isolated on the world stage and limited in what it could do to support Israel. All four assumptions were dead wrong. The supreme leader was eliminated in one of the opening strikes, along with much of Iran's senior leadership. The predicted mass regional attack on Israel has not materialized. Because of Iran's disastrous decision to launch missiles against its neighbors, the region has unified not against Israel, but against Iran. And America is re-established as the pre-eminent military power on the planet. This war will continue to cost American lives and treasure to successfully prosecute. But there's no denying it is very different from what the "experts" have predicted for the last 47 years. President Trump's mission is not nation-building. It is to give the American people the opportunity to go through the next half-century freed from the deadly threat of the Islamic Republic. The writer is a former U.S. deputy national security adviser for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs.