Bernard-Henri Lévy urges Trump to use military buildup to confront Iran

French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to use the US military buildup near Iran to strike the Islamic Republic and support Iranian protesters, arguing that diplomacy and containment have failed.

In a commentary published in The Wall Street Journal, Lévy questioned what Trump intends to do with the “colossal armada” deployed off Iran’s coast, including aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines and Tomahawk missiles.

“Is any compromise possible with fanatics who proclaim that they prefer the apocalypse to defeat and who, if there were an apocalypse, wouldn’t hesitate to drag their near and distant neighbors into it?” Lévy said.

“I hope the American administration understands this. I hope it has grasped that the era of containment is over, that deterrence doesn’t work against a state that has made internal terror, regional destabilization and the end of the world both a mode of governance and a program,” he added.