Rarely has an editorial made such a stupid argument as the one the National Review editors made today:

Rarely has a foreign country seemed so eager to get bombed by the United States as Iran does right now.

In its latest provocation, Iran seized a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday. It wasn’t a subtle operation. Revolutionary Guard forces rappelled onto the tanker from a helicopter, and if you have any doubt, it was all captured on videotape.

The rest of the editorial just goes downhill from there. The editors do not acknowledge that Iran seized the British tanker because the U.K. had previously seized one of theirs. The “provocation” they describe was a response to an unprovoked act by Britain. Whether Britain chose to do this on their own, or were goaded into doing it by the U.S., Iran was reacting to something that was being done to them. Only in the Orwellian world of Iran hawks does this count as aggression. They have to ignore the real reason why the Stena Impero was seized, because acknowledging that Iran was responding in kind to an act by the British government would make their larger argument fall apart. The evidence doesn’t support their contention that Iran wants to be attacked by the U.S. Everything that Iran has done over the last fourteen months since the U.S. started violating the JCPOA indicates just the opposite. Iran isn’t seeking a crisis or a conflict, and were it not for the unjust economic war being waged against them none of this would be happening.

The Financial Times reports on the Iranian view of what their government did:

“Eye for eye and hand for hand is our Islamic ideology. An American eye or a European hand are not more valuable than an Iranian eye or hand,” said Mohammad-Sadegh Javadi-Hesar, a reformist politician. “Iran will not let the balance of power be disrupted in the region, which would equal our death. If we let Britain treat us unjustly now, others will follow suit.”

Iranian leaders say they are committed to diplomatic solutions and seek neither escalation of tensions nor war with the US or other western states. But while they say they will not initiate any attack, they insist that any act of aggression will be reciprocated, even if it risks wider conflagration.

Each time that the U.S. has increased pressure, Iran has resisted that pressure and pushed back. Each Iranian response has been limited and calibrated to warn the other parties to the JCPOA that they need to hold up their end of the bargain, and each response has been an opportunity to deescalate and avoid a collision. The Trump administration has squandered every opportunity and has chosen escalation instead. Predictably, the editorial calls for piling on even more pressure, including revoking the waivers for cooperation on civilian nuclear projects:

It should continue to send more forces into the region as a message of resolve, and to work with allies to better secure shipping in the Strait. It should ratchet up the pressure campaign against Tehran, and revoke the remaining waivers that allow the Europeans to cooperate with Iran’s purportedly peaceful nuclear program.

Revoking the waivers puts the survival of the nuclear deal in jeopardy, but then that is why hard-liners want to get rid of them. If the U.S. adds more pressure, we can expect Iran to intensify its resistance. That is not because their government is “eager to get bombed.” The suggestion that they are eager for this is idiotic. They will intensify resistance because they aren’t going to remain passive while the U.S. wages a relentless and illegitimate economic war against their country. Failing to understand that makes it that much harder to avoid a completely unnecessary war.