Trump Scored a point as Clinton Stumbled on Iran

In an otherwise strong debate performance for Hillary Clinton on Monday night, she stumbled when it came to Iran. In the section of the presidential forum focused on national security issues, she played on a quip Donald Trump made earlier this month about the Iranian Navy's recent maneuvers in the Persian Gulf.

"The other day, I saw Donald saying there were some Iranian sailors on a ship and they were taunting American sailors. 'If they taunted our sailors, I would blow them out of the water' and start another war?," she asked.

The line of attack is understandable. It's part of the #dangerousdonald meme that Democrats and other Trump foes have used now for more than a year. The classic iteration is Clinton's applause line: "A man who can be provoked by a tweet should not have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes."

And on its surface it seems like a reasonable criticism. After all, no one wants a shooting war with Iran. And when she puts it like that, it seems like Trump has given yet another example of how he lacks the temperament to be commander in chief.

But Clinton's quip badly misunderstands what's going on right now in the Persian Gulf.

To start, taunting is not the right word for it. Iranian boats have been sailing dangerously close in recent months to U.S. ships that are in the Persian Gulf to secure one of the world's most important shipping lanes. In the first week in September there were three such incidents. In one case, a U.S. boat fired live ammunition to deter the Iranian sailors.

This isn't a hypothetical question either. In January, when two U.S. boats sailed accidentally into Iranian waters, they were boarded by Iran's Navy and crew members were humiliated in a brief incident right before President Barack Obama's final State of the Union speech.

These incidents have so alarmed Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of U.S. Central Command, that he told reporters this month that he worried about a miscalculation. "If they continue to test us, we are going to respond, and we are going to protect ourselves and our partners."

Clinton presumably wasn't trying to diminish Gen. Votel and the risk he is seeing. A big part of Clinton's pitch to voters on national security is that she understands the world and how it works, whereas Trump is a dangerous amateur who doesn't grasp the basics about everything from the U.S. nuclear posture to our systems of alliances. It would behoove her to take Iran's aggression seriously, and to tell Trump that those are not mere "taunts."

The other problem with Clinton's line about the Persian Gulf incidents is that it undercuts her own pledge to get tougher on the Iranians for their support for terrorism and proxy wars against U.S. allies in the region. Her top national security aide, Jake Sullivan, in June put it like this: "We need to be raising the costs to Iran for its destabilizing behavior and we need to be raising the confidence of our Sunni partners."

One way to raise the costs to Iran is to send the clear message that its provocations in the Persian Gulf will have consequences. In this respect, Trump was correct to threaten Iran, but wrong to be so specific. The substance of his remarks is nonetheless very close to what Votel implied earlier this month. Clinton missed an opportunity to show that she too understood the importance of deterrence in the Persian Gulf.

Comment by clicking here.

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was previously the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast. Lake also covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI, and was a contributing editor at the New Republic.

Previously:
• 09/26/16: Obama kept military out of the loop on Iran payments
• 09/21/16: Preparing for North Korea's inevitable collapse
• 09/20/16: Why this neocon spy chief has joined Team Trump
• 09/12/16: U.S. spies think China wants to read your email
• 09/05/16: Kerry's soft words blunt U.S. hard power at sea
• 09/01/16: China's 'little green boats' have Japan on alert
• 08/31/16: Obama's CIA director wants to stick around for Clinton
• 08/29/16: Here's what Kerry should do to divide Iran and Russia
• 08/17/16: U.S. special ops in Syria are told, 'Don't get shot'
• 08/10/16: Why #NeverTrump movement is also #NeverGaryJohnson
• 08/04/16: Why Russia keeps getting away with hacking the U.S.
• 07/19/16: When clues nearly led the FBI to America's favorite Saudi
• 07/12/16: General Flynn outlines an all-out war on terror
• 07/11/16: The Palestinian incentive program for killing Jews
• 06/28/16: Obama's Iran policy is at odds with Hillary's message
• 06/22/16: Is Israel a pariah? Not according to its powerful new friends
• 06/10/16: U.S. taxpayers are funding Iran's military expansion
• 06/08/16: It's for good reason that aiding Kurds in and around Iraq is among the only bipartisan goals on America's foreign policy agenda
• 06/07/16: Why the U.S. Needs Russian Rocket Engines to Spy on Russia
• 06/06/16: Hillary Targets the 'Blame America First' Republicans
• 06/02/16: Hollywood and Korean pop could bring down Kim Jong-Un
• 05/25/16: REVEALED: The secret history of the Iran-deal 'echo chamber'
• 04/27/16: Pakistan has a China connection to nuclear trouble
• 04/19/16: Obama still not finished reinvigorating Iran
• 04/08/16: 'Panama Papers' could help go after Assad's wealth
• 04/05/16: Fascist or con man: The duelling Trump narratives
• 03/23/16: Hillary's convenient evolution on Israel
• 03/21/16: Cruz assembles an unlikely team of foreign-policy rivals
• 03/07/16: Trump turns out to be a politician, and not a good one
• 02/17/16: As Obama urges Congress, military says it can't send Gitmo detainees to U.S.
• 02/06/16: Hillary's security clearance is under scrutiny
• 12/23/15: Iran deal restricts U.S. more than Congress knew
• 12/11/15: Iranian troops abandoning Assad, Western officials say
• 12/09/15: Obama team weighs cyberwar options on Islamic State
• 11/20/15: After the Paris attacks, Bush whiffs on his war speech
• 11/18/15: What Obama's incoherence and anger at post-Paris press conference reveals
• 11/17/15: Dems begin to embrace 'regime change' --- again
• 11/13/15: Hurt feelings, unsafe spaces and other Israeli crimes
• 11/09/15: Egyptian leader seen as target of jihad
• 11/04/15: How Ahmad Chalabi survived his war to free Iraq
• 10/26/15: Now we know: AIPAC and the Dems who supported Iran deal
• 10/21/15: GOPers at Hilary hearing taking cues from Dems?