Israeli media, including Israel Hayom, has spent all week fretting over the possibility that US President Donald Trump will cut short Operation Epic Fury, abandoning Israel to alone face a battered but abiding radical Islamic regime in Iran.
Such fussing is normal, but misplaced. Alongside Israel, Trump has proven to be this generation's great generator of moral purpose. His principled leadership and steadfast determination to "win" against the enemy should be celebrated and lauded, not derided by insinuations of disengagement and enfeebling rumors about deescalation.
Trump is awakening the West from suicidal slumber, from dangerous cultural and strategic malaise. He understands that the West must defend itself against the worst radical Islamic actors such as Iran, beginning with vigorous support for the State of Israel's vanguard war against it. He knows that the current conflict is essentially a world war against America's greatest strategic adversaries including China and Russia – who are allied with Iran.
Therefore, Trump is exceedingly unlikely to desert the battlefield without more significantly quelling Iran. He will not just declare a synthetic "victory" this weekend and withdraw his bombers.
Trump will further pursue the military effort to destroy Tehran's missile production and nuclear bombmaking facilities; to confiscate or eradicate Iran's cache of highly enriched uranium; to strip Iran of its ability to interfere with container and oil shipping out of the Arabian Gulf; and to extinguish the threat of the ayatollahs to Gulf Arab countries.
In past, I too have cogitated about Trump's truancy; about the peril of his outwardly non-ideological approach to political and foreign affairs; about his ostensibly too-transactional thinking; about his non-dogmatic methodology for "solving" conflicts – refreshing in some contexts but dangerously delusional in others.
It does sometimes seem that Trump ridiculously believes the force of his personality can fix everything and lead to swift and "huge" peace deals everywhere. This appears to be true regarding his pie-in-the-sky plans for "grand civilizational peace" in Gaza.
And in the current context, it is possible that the ceiling on this war will be set not by the cusp of Iran's remaining offensive capabilities but by Washington's imperfect endurance. Wary of the economic costs of a prolonged conflict, limited by dwindling weapons stocks, and faced with diminishing military returns – at some point Trump may halt the campaign even if the US Armed Forces and the Israel Defense Forces believe that more battle is necessary.
He will call the war "very complete" and an "awesome win." A Trump triumph. Actually, he already has declared this to be the case.
NEVERTHELESS, I think that President Trump understands that stopping the war now amid some short-term economic discomfort would be a victory for the mullahs. Iran cannot be allowed to conclude that shutting down oil flows is its passport to survival, now or in the future. After all, the spike in oil prices due to traffic stoppage in the Strait of Hormuz was not unexpected. As Trump himself has said, the disruption is a "small price to pay" for major security advances.
It also makes no sense to leave so many loose ends in Iran, from missiles and production facilities to nuclear sites at Pickaxe Mountain and the Isfahan tunnels where Iran's gigantic stockpile of highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombmaking is said to be stored. This is why a raid of US and Israeli ground troops on Isfahan is being considered, to extricate and confiscate the uranium.
There is also little reason to leave standing any IRGC or Basij bases, when these are the key agents of Iranian repression against its own people. "Help is on its way," Trump told Iranians, and he meant it. This is why US and Israeli assaults are increasingly focused on installations of regime control and repression in addition to nuclear and missile sites.
So why the obfuscation in Trump's many statements? One day he says the war is almost over and the next day (or the same day) he says that there are battle plans for six weeks more. Well, the administration's ambiguity makes sense because it confuses the enemy. If we are left guessing at Trump's next moves, so are the ayatollahs.
But Trump himself? I do not think that he is at all confused or capricious regarding Iran. From his 2018 dumping of Obama's rotten nuclear deal with Iran, to his 2020 assassination of IRGC chief Qassem Soleimani, to Operation Midnight Hammer last June, to Operation Epic Fury over the past two weeks – Trump has proven neither fickle nor flighty.
On the contrary, Trump has broadcast unwavering willpower and purpose. He ain't a paragon of virtue in so many other ways, but in strategic matters Trump has shown profound understanding of his responsibility to reshape the regional and global strategic architecture by eviscerating Iran; of the historic opportunity to bring peace through strength.
Trump also has evinced domestic political courage, taking on hard Left Marxist and pro-Islamist critics and hard Right isolationist and Christian nationalist critics. He has taken risks with his own MAGA base by slapping-down the loudest and most influential foul-mouth faultfinders like Tucker Carlson.
REMEMBER this: The Islamic Republic of Iran is a self-declared radical power that openly seeks to create Greater Persia; to export its revolution and impose it on the entire Middle East, if not beyond. It explicitly sees itself in civilizational clash with the West.
It believes that all means are legitimate in achieving its goals – from sending Shiite shock troops into battle across the region, to orchestrating terrorist attacks in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, to developing nuclear weapons.
Despite the rise of an enemy potentially as lethal as Nazi Germany, many Western leaders nevertheless have preferred accommodation with Iran. After all, there are calculations of caution, pragmatism, realism, diplomatic alliances, business interests, and political preservation that have mitigated against confronting Iran. It always is easier to delay and deflect than to fight a fiercely committed and skilled enemy.
And yet, Trump has taken on the Iranian challenge. In defiance of conventional wisdom that the "responsible" approach is to swallow Iran's piecemeal provocations to avoid war, and that Iran's hegemonic ambitions are anyway near-unstoppable, Trump preferred to draw blood and a red line. He defied the ayatollahs instead of dancing with them.
And so, Trump ought to be recognized and appreciated for his moral and strategic clarity. This war is an act of rectitude, of justice and sanity in foreign affairs. Regarding Iran and its collaborators, Trump has struck a weighty wallop against wickedness, a blow against an "axis of evil" that has not been seen since World War II.
So, if you want to worry that Trump could yet cut a deal with Tehran that does not push Iran far enough away from the nuclear bomb and from Israel's borders, or that he may stop short of regime change, go ahead and stew.
But for the moment, Trump should be lauded for the nobility of his resistance to Iran; for smashing Soleimani and Khomeini Sr. (and one hopes and assumes Khomeini Jr. soon too) and the apocalypse they represent.
