After years of chanting “Death to America,” the Iranian mullahs experienced “Death from America.” It was a fitting end for men who had dedicated their lives to committing atrocities against their own people and much of the Western world.
Why did it take so long to reckon with Iran?
Since the 1979 storming of the U.S. Embassy — when Iranian militants seized 66 Americans and held 52 of them captive for 444 days — the theocratic regime in Tehran has waged a sustained proxy war against the United States.
From sponsoring terrorism to defiantly advancing its nuclear ambitions, Iran’s malevolent leadership and its network of proxy militias have destabilized not only the Middle East but the world.
Together, they bear responsibility for the deaths and injuries of more than 1,000 U.S. service members across the region. The toll is not abstract. My son’s West Point roommate lost both legs after stepping on an Iranian-made improvised explosive device in Afghanistan.
For anyone who has forgotten the scale of Tehran’s aggression over the past 47 years, here is a useful list of its most egregious provocations.
This evil regime’s reign of terrorism spanned eight presidential administrations. Yet, until President Donald Trump, no U.S. president was bold enough to confront Tehran head-on and halt the Iranian regime’s rise. Even President Ronald Reagan — so often remembered for his willingness to challenge adversaries abroad — ultimately avoided a direct confrontation with the mullahs.
Why now?
Former President Joe Biden’s reckless decision to abruptly withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 shook the balance of power across the globe profoundly and irrevocably. Biden’s massive display of weakness set into motion an unstoppable sequence of events.
Within months, Russian President Vladimir Putin began massing troops along the Ukrainian border in preparation for his February 2022 invasion. Shortly before launching his “special military operation,” Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where the two declared a “friendship without limits.”
At the same time, Biden’s push to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, President Barack Obama’s flawed nuclear deal with Iran, effectively strengthened the Iranian regime. His administration relaxed some of the sanctions imposed during the first Trump administration and failed to enforce others, allowing Tehran to reap billions in additional oil revenue. The regime used that windfall to fund its proxy network, including Hamas, which carried out the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel.
Is the U.S. fighting Israel’s war?
The Trump administration’s rationale for the strikes rests on its assessment of U.S. strategic interests — and on the stark reality Trump confronted upon returning to office.
By the start of his second term, Iran was already close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. His administration initially sought a diplomatic solution. When negotiations collapsed last June, Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike that inflicted significant damage on three of the regime’s largest nuclear facilities.
But the strikes did not end Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Undeterred, the regime moved to reconstruct its program at new locations.
While continuing to engage the Iranians diplomatically, the Trump administration began preparing for a more dangerous possibility: that diplomacy would fail and the U.S. might ultimately have to confront Iran more directly.
U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff recently recalled a boast from an Iranian negotiator: “They controlled 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium and were fully aware that it could produce 11 nuclear bombs.”
A more immediate threat was Iran’s rapidly expanding missile and drone production. With manufacturing and funding assistance from China, the regime’s arsenal was growing larger by the day.
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted this week, Iran was producing about 100 ballistic missiles a month. At that pace, its arsenal could exceed 5,000 by 2027.
That would transform the strategic equation. With thousands of missiles, some capable of striking targets across the Middle East and parts of Europe, Tehran could overwhelm even advanced missile defenses through sheer volume. Nuclear weapons would almost become secondary. Such a massive arsenal would allow the regime to intimidate its neighbors, deter retaliation, and challenge the international order with growing confidence.
At that point, nuclear or not, Rubio said, Iran would be able to thumb its nose at the world.
In a Jan. 13 Truth Social post, Trump drew a red line for the mullahs. He urged Iranian citizens to continue protesting, promising that “help is on the way.” At that time, roughly 2,000 protesters had been killed in the government’s crackdown on dissent.
As the Pentagon coordinated a military response, tens of thousands more protesters were slaughtered. Estimates put the toll between 30,000 and 40,000.
Unlike Obama, who drew a red line over Syria’s chemical weapons in 2012 but retreated, Trump followed through.
Even rabid anti-Trumper George Will, who penned a December op-ed in the Washington Post titled “A sickening moral slum of an administration,” applauded the strikes on Iran. His latest headline? “At last, the credibility of U.S. deterrence has been restored.”
Will noted, “Today, Vladimir Putin is watching Venezuela, Iran … and soon, perhaps, Cuba, join Syria as vanished clients.”
NO, ISRAEL ISN’T MAKING TRUMP BOMB IRAN
China is also watching its supply of cheap oil evaporate and may now be reconsidering its ambitions toward Taiwan.
America’s era of bowing to tyrants is over. Our long-overdue reckoning with Tehran has finally arrived.
