Nicholas Kristof: The Old Man Dreaming Up Wars for Young Men to Fight (NYT, 3/28)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/opinion/iran-war-kharg-island.html

Kristof's title is a reference to something George McGovern said: I’m tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to fight.

Excerpt from near the end of Kristof's opinion piece:

“Even if we take Kharg, Iran won’t capitulate,” Dennis Citrinowicz, formerly the top Iran watcher in Israel Defense Intelligence, told me. “And everything’s going to escalate, and the prices of oil and whatever will be dramatically higher.”

If Trump wanted to seize territory, the better choice might be several small islands — Abu Musa and the Tunb islands — that are also claimed by the United Arab Emirates. A joint American and Emirati force could seize them and Emiratis could occupy them.

But even that would be a huge escalation. The truth is that any seizure of Iranian-controlled land would most likely lead Iran to retaliate by attacking energy infrastructure around the region — and, more terrifying, desalination plants that provide the water on which some Gulf cities depend. With refineries out of commission, we could face oil and gas shortages for years to come. The Houthis in Yemen might also join the fray by blocking ship traffic through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is the Red Sea choke point equivalent to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf.

-snip-

“I don’t see this ending very soon,” Nasr warned. “I think the risk of this becoming uglier, with a lot of costs to the United States, is quite high.”

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

1. Kick