He defied nearly all of his advisers, including Vice President J.D. Vance, and he has pursued what many regard as the prudent approach to the Iran confrontation.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has stood as a persistent foe to the United States. The theocratic regime under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini began by detaining 52 Americans, among them the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, from November 4, 1979, until the midday moment when President Reagan took office on January 20, 1981. Khomeini consistently led crowds in cries of “Death to America,” a rhetoric he labeled the “Great Satan.” The refrain of “Death to America” and the claim that the United States is the “Great Satan” have been echoed by every successor since then. Tehran has funded proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen, which have targeted American allies in the region and seek to propagate Iran’s theocratic revolution toward Saudi Arabia and Palestine, while blocking the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea, threatening global oil and natural gas trade and risking a worldwide economic upheaval.
There exists a serious and unacceptable risk that, if Iran possessed a nuclear weapon, its first target could be Israel, followed by the United States. While the Soviet Union and Red China deterred themselves through fear of a U.S. nuclear retaliation, the Tehran leadership may not share that restraint. They might imagine that any who die in a holy jihad to spread Shiite Islam would gain immediate entrance to paradise. In the absence of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of evading U.S. defenses, they could opt to place warheads on vessels, steer them into American harbors such as New York and San Francisco, and unleash devastation upon millions of civilians along the shorelines.
Since 1979, six U.S. Presidents—Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—have failed to curb Iran’s ambition to erode what they perceive as America’s secular and materialistic culture. None have treated Iran as the existential threat it presents. Much like a Western democracy during the 1930s that did not adequately counter Adolf Hitler’s rearmament, Americans for nearly five decades have overlooked Iran’s drive to bring death and destruction to our shores by pursuing a nuclear capability.
Iran’s aims extend beyond reclaiming influence over its immediate neighbors, akin to Russia’s actions in Ukraine or China’s posture toward Taiwan—though those ambitions are dangerous in their own right. Tehran seeks to undermine the United States and everything it represents. While Iran’s power may pale in comparison with that of China and Russia’s nuclear arsenals, its commitment to erasing the tenets of religious tolerance, gender equality, and the universal creed that “All human beings are born free and equal” is more fervent than those powers’ stated aims.
As a revolutionary theocracy, Iran aspires to lay the groundwork for a Shiite-dominated world order. Unlike China and Russia, which lack a universal moral program for how people should live, Iran promotes a comprehensive moral blueprint grounded in Shiite Islam. The notion of exporting this revolution globally is not merely rhetoric; it has historical antecedents, as seen in the 1989 fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini that called for Muslims everywhere to kill Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, a directive reaffirmed by his successor Ali Khamenei in 2017. An attempted assassination in 2022 in Chautauqua, New York, on U.S. soil left Rushdie blind in one eye for writing a book that some jihadists viewed as disrespectful toward the Qur’an, while others argued its critique of Islam had merit.
Some Americans, naively perhaps, hold the view that Iran can be bought off if the United States were to abandon its alliance with Israel. Others, like Condoleezza Rice, who served as Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009, believed at the time that a confrontation with Iran would be difficult, perilous, and politically unpopular, a stance aligned with non-interventionist, isolationist sentiments. Fortunately, today Rice has supported President Trump’s stance against Iran.
Many Americans, including myself, feel that the nation has spent excessive sums and sacrificed too many lives in conflicts we never should have pursued, such as the attempt to rebuild Islamic Afghanistan into a Western-style democracy over two decades. Others remain rightly angry about George W. Bush’s bipartisan Iraq War, backed by Sen. Hillary Clinton, which toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime when it was already weakened after the 1991 Gulf War. Older generations still recall the misguided effort to win the Vietnam War, where North Vietnam posed no existential threat to the United States or Western democracy. The toll was high: 58,281 American lives lost and 153,372 wounded.
Nevertheless, what President Trump understands—and what a substantial majority of Americans have not fully grasped—is that Iran is our mortal foe, committed to regime change in the United States in a way those other conflicts never were. When Khomeini established the Islamic Republic in 1979, the constitution explicitly proclaimed the goal of “exporting the revolution.” Khomeini viewed Iran’s model as a universal scheme for oppressed Muslims worldwide to overthrow Western imperialism and topple local regimes. In this sense, the ideology is pan-Islamic and global. Iran is a revolutionary theocracy seeking at minimum to export its revolution across the Middle East and beyond, much like Lenin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China once did, though Iran’s ambition is explicitly ideological and universal.
In June 2025, President Trump wisely targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities during the Twelve Day War, but by the winter of 2026 it became evident that Iran had resumed its nuclear program. Before the February 28, 2026 strikes by the United States and Israel, Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff indicated that Iran was “probably a week away” from producing weapons-grade material, and Trump later assessed that Iran stood at about “two weeks” from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Facing a defining choice in February 2026, President Trump confronted the gravest decision of his presidency: should he unleash a military campaign to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, an option that would likely be deeply unpopular in the wake of earlier conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq? Alternatively, should he defer to his advisers and allow the issue to be resolved by a future administration, potentially leaving a nuclear-armed regime whose forces loathe the United States to fester?
Young staffers and some senior commanders, including the brash and relatively inexperienced Vice President J.D. Vance, the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and many top generals, urged caution and argued that war would be arduous, dangerous, and politically costly. They warned of Iranian retaliation by closing Hormuz, spiking energy prices, and harming the global economy, while suggesting limited U.S. resources, potential European non-cooperation, and a protracted fight that could jeopardize the political fate of the administration. They contended that a war would not be a swift victory, unlike the capture of a sovereign autocrat, and that popular support in the United States could wane by 2026’s midterms or beyond. They argued that the public might never understand why war with Iran would be essential when Afghanistan and Iraq did not present the same existential threat.
President Trump weighed these considerations and chose a course of action that aimed to minimize American casualties while delivering a decisive impact. He ordered a targeted strike on February 28, 2026, that effectively removed the core leadership of Iran—civilian, religious, and military—in a blow that eliminated the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The president mobilized three aircraft carrier battle groups, large troop contingents, and the full spectrum of conventional U.S. military power, while the Navy was directed to enforce a blockade on Iran’s oil and gas shipments. That blockade has imposed a heavy financial burden on Iran, with estimates suggesting losses of more than $400 million daily. While the Institute for the Study of War does not claim that Hormuz has been closed to all shipping, the administration asserts that Iran’s own oil shipments have been entirely halted at the Strait’s mouth.
Five months into the conflict, Iran finds itself further from attaining a nuclear weapon than at any point in recent memory, its economy in tatters, its navy effectively neutralized, its air force crippled, and its stockpiled ballistic missiles largely destroyed. Widespread civil unrest has erupted in the south, and Kurdish fighters in the northwest pursue a free Kurdistan, a cause many observers feel Iran deserves.
The new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah, may be dead, and if alive he is likely reluctant to appear in public, speak on camera, or engage with the Iranian presidency. The state is dominated by the ultraconservative Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which governs the country and is widely despised by roughly eighty-one percent of Iranians. The economy is collapsing under hyperinflation and severe shortages, while a drought has prompted warnings from the Iranian president that Tehran’s nine million residents might need to evacuate if rainfall does not improve. Life for ordinary Iranians has deteriorated dramatically.
Both Congressional Democrats and the media, led by the New York Times, have often misread the situation. Some commentators seem openly sympathetic to Iran’s cause and complain about the speed of Iranian subjugation, fixating on the difficulty of the campaign rather than its strategic necessity. Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly invoked the unconstitutional War Powers Act to attempt to halt the conflict, while offering few constructive ideas on preventing Iran from someday acquiring a nuclear capability. President Trump has remained unwavering and resolute in sustaining the war against Iran despite domestic critics and a lack of broad popular support.
To date, Iran covers about 17th place globally in both land area and population among the world’s nations. The United States, by choosing to minimize American ground involvement, has still managed to inflict significant damage on Iran with its Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. Casualties on the American side have been modest—18 service members killed and around 808 wounded. For comparison, the Afghanistan conflict lasted two decades with far higher tolls (1,922 killed and 20,769 wounded), while the Iraq War under George W. Bush caused 4,492 deaths and 32,292 wounded. President Trump has achieved notable strategic gains while incurring comparatively low American losses.
Today, roughly 60 percent of Americans oppose ongoing U.S. involvement in the Iran conflict, even as (1) Iran remains a far more immediate threat than China or Russia, (2) the United States appears to be clinching the conflict, (3) American forces face minimal danger and have sustained few casualties, and (4) eighty percent of Iranians reportedly oppose their own government.
In the long run, the collapse of the IRGC regime seems plausible, paving the way for collaboration with a new Iranian government to greatly expand oil and gas exports—much as the United States does now with Venezuela post-Maduro—thereby potentially lowering global energy prices. In the meantime, patience and resolve are urged. The nation should recognize and acknowledge President Trump’s boldness, courage, and steadfast commitment to this war.
