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For decades, “anti-war” pundits, Democrats, Iranian shills from the Obama era, the United Nations, right-wing isolationists, think tank experts, and others have issued hysterically dire predictions of the tragedy that would befall the world if the United States moved against the Islamic regime in Iran. You could fill a thick book with quotes from experts bringing up the specter of World War III.
Only a few months ago, groyper cult leader and podcaster Tucker Carlson predicted that Iran’s “fearsome arsenal of ballistic missiles” would “easily kill thousands of Americans” in the first week of conflict. Carlson predicted that the “global bloc called BRICS, which represents the majority of the world’s land mass,” would come to the aid of Iran, and the conflict could “easily become a world war.”
Well, none of that has come true. Not even close.
Yet, the public is being subjected to a campaign of demoralization, historical illiteracy, and lies. We’re less than two weeks into Operation Epic Fury, and an average American might be under the impression it’s the Vietnam War all over again.
War never comes without a price. The truth about military conflicts shouldn’t be sugarcoated. No one knows how war will turn out. It will almost certainly be messy and expensive, and the media have a responsibility to report all the ugly and gory details.
But the joint American and Israeli campaign to defang the Islamic Republic has been perhaps the most efficient and successful large-scale military operation in modern history, already meeting most of its objectives. You’d never know it reading the establishment media.
“Even as Iran has been ‘pummeled’ by Israeli and American air strikes, with its military capabilities greatly diminished, Tehran continues to demonstrate resolve, both in adapting and expanding its military tactics,” reports ABC News, employing the media’s prevailing defeatist tone.
By “diminished” capacity, ABC means that the U.S. and Israel have complete control of the Iranian airspace while suffering limited casualties. The regime’s air defense systems, supplied by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, are largely destroyed. We are now methodically demolishing Iran’s military infrastructure, control headquarters, manufacturing plants, and, almost surely, the cleric’s nuclear program.
By “diminished,” ABC News means there is no real military hierarchy in Iran. Indeed, the Iranian air force and navy no longer functionally exist.
The U.S. has already stopped the clerics from obtaining a “fearsome arsenal of ballistic missiles” and reaching a line of immunity that would have made conflict far more deadly. In 2024, the regime launched 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. Today, it fires one or two at a time. And the attacks decrease every day. The Iranians are now relying on low-cost drones.
No BRICS nation, incidentally, not Russia nor China, has come to the aid of the mullahs. The regime, in fact, has launched missiles at two BRICS members, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in its attempt to widen the conflict.
Even if Putin wanted to help the Islamists, he probably wouldn’t know who to call. The entire leadership of the regime was decapitated in the first minutes of the conflict. A pinpoint obliteration of an enemy’s top brass is unprecedented in modern war.
Yet, outlets such as Reuters want us to believe that the U.S. military thinks, “Iran’s leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of imminent collapse.”
Largely intact? Except, I guess, for the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei; Aziz Nasirzadeh, the minister of defense; Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Ali Shamkhani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council; Mohammad Shirazi, the chief of the military bureau … and, well, you get the idea.
Over 60, and counting, of the top regime leaders are buried under rubble. Contending that Iranian leadership is “largely intact” would have been tantamount to saying in 1945, ‘Yeah, we got Hitler, Bormann, Himmler, Goebbels, Goring, and Heydrich, but management is still going strong.’ Of course, there’ll be no shortage of Twelver cultists lining up to replace their fallen comrades. What can’t be replaced is experience and institutional knowledge.
One of the pressing issues is that the Islamic Republic has now reportedly closed the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world’s oil flows each day. CNN reports that the Trump administration “did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the strait in response to strikes.” This claim, almost surely leaked to the stenographers at the network by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, flies in the face of credulity. The Pentagon has been dealing with threats to strait for over 40 years. But if you’re really worried about the Strait of Hormuz, just imagine what the regime could do to world oil supplies if it were allowed to have a nuclear weapon or Chinese Communist Party supersonic anti-ship missiles. The objective of the assault was to stop that from happening.
It’s perfectly healthy to debate the necessity to attack revolutionary Iran, which has waged a 47-year violent war against the U.S. through its proxies. Anyone using even a modicum of historical context should admire the extraordinary power and precision of the American military campaign. And that’s just what I know about. It’s likely that there are many things we don’t.
None of this is to say there aren’t questions, either. What are we doing about the enriched uranium that the regime admitted could potentially make 11 nuclear weapons? Can we spark an internal regime change? Israel has reportedly begun targeting Basij and Iranian security forces with precision strikes, using information provided by Iranian citizens. A change in leadership would be the best-case scenario, but certainly not necessary for victory.
Many of the experts who warned an attack on Iran would unleash an apocalypse now caution that if the clerics hold on, they will be extra mad at us, more radicalized, and more incentivized to pursue nuclear weapons.
GOOD LUCK, MULLAHS. WE DON’T KNOW TRUMP’S PLAN EITHER
Will they be more dangerous than the government that funded murderous proxy armies across the Middle East? Or the one that murdered tens of thousands of its own peaceful protesters over a few days’ time? Will they be more incentivized than the mullahs who built cement-reinforced nuclear facilities 300 feet under granite mountains? It’s doubtful. But if that’s the case, we’ll have to face them again in the future.
There’s no panacea. But Epic Fury, at the very least, ensures that the regime is now weaker in every way imaginable.
