The American Believability Crisis

Foreign Affairs Bad things happen when nobody takes you seriously. Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images Last week, there was a lot of rumbling out of Washington about a massive escalation against Iran. Admiral Brad Cooper, who is currently the king of the wood in CENTCOM, had reportedly hatched a “go-big” option that would grievously damage Iranian military assets—in the depressed dialect of military press releases, “degrade their capabilities”—while drawing only a limited response, thus saving our dwindling supplies of defensive weapons. Conversations swirled about striking “Pickaxe Mountain,” an annex to the Natanz nuclear site and allegedly the resting place for Iranian nuclear materials. On Friday, President Donald Trump himself said the U.S. would “be hitting [the Iranians] very