Trump’s Iran strategy is working and teaching our foes what deterrence means

President Donald Trump didn’t commencement this war. The Islamic Republic did — connected Nov. 4, 1979, erstwhile it invaded the U.S. Embassy successful Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. For astir fractional a century, the world’s starring authorities sponsor of coercion has killed and maimed much Americans than immoderate different violent authorities connected Earth. It adjacent plotted doubly to assassinate Trump himself.

The regime’s attacks against the United States and our allies are not a bid of isolated incidents, but a single, continuous warfare waged by the mullahs for 47 years. From the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing to the Iranian IEDs that killed 603 Americans successful Iraq — astir 1 retired of each six American combat fatalities — the authorities operated connected the presumption that Washington lacked the tummy to respond. For years, that stake paid off. Tehran interpreted restraint not arsenic prudence but arsenic permission.

From the October 7 Hamas massacre of astir 1,200 people, including 46 Americans to 180-plus attacks connected U.S. forces past year, the authorities has ever told america what it wants: decease to America.

To face this looming threat, each American president since Jimmy Carter chose to footwear the tin down the road, calling it diplomacy. That changed successful 2020 erstwhile Trump ordered the onslaught against Qassim Soleimani, the regime’s main violent and IED mastermind. Washington’s foreign-policy people criticized it, but the Iranian radical celebrated it.

MICHAEL OREN: IRAN HAS WAGED WAR ON AMERICA FOR 47 YEARS — TIME TO END IT

In this U.S. Navy handout, the USS Thomas Hudner fires a Tomahawk onshore onslaught rocket successful enactment of Operation Epic Fury connected March 1, 2026, astatine sea. (U.S. Navy/via Getty Images)

When the authorities massacred much than 40,000 protesters successful January 2026 and attempted to fell the atrocity from the satellite by shutting down the internet, the radical again looked to Trump for help. He answered their telephone by doing what his predecessors ne'er dared, moving to "end this long-running information erstwhile and for all."

The lawsuit for enactment was strong. Beyond humanitarian grounds, Steve Witkoff, the U.S. peculiar envoy to the Middle East, revealed the details of his and Special Peace Envoy Jared Kushner’s negotiations starring up to the conflict. Their Iranian counterparts proudly admitted they stockpiled capable uranium for 11 atomic bombs, attainable successful weeks. When the U.S. offered to proviso Iran’s atomic substance for escaped successful speech for a halt to enrichment, Tehran refused. Witkoff concluded that Iran had nary volition of doing thing different than weaponizing its stockpile.

This atomic menace was built connected decades of deception. The authorities hid tubes from IAEA inspectors truthful it could secretly reconstruct the Arak reactor. It concealed an full atomic weapons archive from negotiators (subsequently acquired by Israel), past stonewalled planetary investigators probing undeclared atomic materials and activities astatine aggregate sites.

THE WAR HITS HOME: WHY FINANCIAL PAIN AND ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY THREATEN TRUMP’S DRIVE TO TOPPLE IRAN’S REGIME

The Obama Administration’s profoundly flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) did not constrain the Islamic Republic. Instead, it legitimized and funded Iran’s gradual pursuit of atomic weapons. Trump accurately called the JCPOA "the worst woody ever negotiated." He walked distant from the statement successful 2018, instituting a maximum unit campaign, denying the authorities much than $200 cardinal successful lipid gross that would different person financed panic operations.

President Joe Biden inexplicably abandoned the strategy, handing Iran the breathing country to accelerate enrichment — until Trump struck the regime’s atomic facilities astatine Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan past June during Operation Midnight Hammer. When Iran’s negotiators bragged astir their bomb-ready stockpile, telling Witkoff, "We’re not going to springiness you diplomatically what you couldn’t instrumentality militarily," Trump launched Operation Epic Fury.

The operation’s objectives—the embodiment of Trump’s "peace done strength" doctrine — were laid retired by the Department of War: destruct Iran’s violative ballistic missiles and accumulation facilities, annihilate its navy and naval infrastructure, sever violent proxy networks, forestall nuclear-weapons improvement by targeting related sites and degrade the regime’s information apparatus — including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bid centers, aerial defenses, rocket and drone launchers and airfields.

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So far, the results are up of schedule. In a associated cognition with Israel, Ali Khamenei, the regime's leader, was killed alongside overmuch of his interior ellipse and the elder subject bid — including the heads of the IRGC and Basij, arsenic good arsenic elder powerfulness broker Ali Larijani.

More than 80% of Iran’s ballistic rocket stockpile and accumulation capableness has been destroyed, on with the bulk of its naval fleet and larboard infrastructure. Iran’s proxy financing networks — the pipelines that kept Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas equipped and operational — person been severed. Nuclear-related sites crossed the state person been obliterated. At slightest 49 elder authorities officials person been killed oregon removed from the battlefield.

Their Iranian counterparts proudly admitted they stockpiled capable uranium for 11 atomic bombs, attainable successful weeks. 

This unprecedented degradation of the regime's repressive forces is leveling the battlefield and creating unprecedented conditions connected the streets for the Iranian radical to emergence up and situation the mullahs directly.

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The occupation is not finished. But it is connected track. Staying the people volition decorativeness it.

President Trump spoke straight to the Iranian radical successful his code launching the operation: "[T]he hr of your state is astatine hand…When we are finished, instrumentality implicit your government. It volition beryllium yours to take." That infinitesimal is present wrong reach.

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Smoke and flames emergence astatine the tract of airstrikes connected an lipid depot successful Tehran connected March 7, 2026. (Sasan / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)

Trump’s strategy is working. His legs are not wobbly and his committedness unshaken: "We don’t privation to permission early, bash we? … We don’t privation to travel backmost each 2 years." Half-measures against this authorities person a 47-year way grounds of failure. History volition vindicate Trump’s resoluteness to extremity it.

As Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the person of Iran’s antiauthoritarian opposition, enactment it: Donald Trump volition beryllium remembered arsenic the person who stood with the Iranian radical erstwhile it mattered astir — alongside history’s top liberators.