President Donald Trump's war in Iran has cost Americans in a number of obvious ways, MS NOW's Rachel Maddow said on Monday — but it is costing them in a number of subtler and more insidious ways too.
Nothing demonstrates this better, she explained, than a possible terror threat that didn't even affect the United States — a set of five men in suspicious vans who were arrested in the U.K., which raised immediate alarms there.
In July, Maddow explained, "Iran told the U.K. explicitly that if any British base was used by the U.S. military for this war againstiran, that would make that basein the U.K. a legitimate militarytarget for Iran," said Maddow. Now, she said, when today we learn "that five youngmen had been arrested and thosevans were seized outside thegates of this rural air base,well, there was, for obviousreasons, lots and lots ofspeculation about who thesefive young men might be andwhat this might have all beenabout. Lots of speculation,lots of worry, and then lots ofhead scratching."
The investigation is only beginning, Maddow said, even as the five were granted bail. But it highlights security threats that could soon find their way to the United States, too.
"Here in the UnitedStates, it raises an importantquestion about the cost ofTrump's war in Iran," said Maddow. "Raises thequestion as to whether the cost of Trump's warin iran is something that we'vereally adequately grappled with.Is it a cost that's not justgoing to be measured in liveslost and people injured and andbuildings destroyed, andfacilities and aircraft andequipment destroyed, and theshuttering of the Strait ofHormuz and all the other oiltransit routes andinfrastructure that have drivenyour gas and gas and dieselprices and fertilizer prices toall time record highs, the multi-billion dollar cost justof anti-aircraft munitionsalone, let alone all the othermissiles and materiel we haveexpended in this war."
All of these are well known, Maddow said. But beyond that, the U.K. incident "raises this very uncomfortablequestion for us Americans as towhether there's an additionalcost of this war, which mightbe an additional risk for ushere at home of potentialretaliatory violence against usby Iran or its proxies or itssympathizers."
Unfortunately, Maddow said, the U.S. could have a hard time dealing with these threats, because Trump's administration just reassigned Michael Burgwald and Courtland Rae, two of the most important FBI officials investigating terror threats from the Middle East.