I watched the coverage of the joint American-Israeli airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities with a profound sense of relief and long-overdue justice.
Back in January 2006, I wrote "Iran: A Ticking Nuclear Bomb" to highlight then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and the regime's explicit threats to wipe Israel off the map. I pointed to the chants of "Death to America" in their parliament and how their growing missile program threatened not only neighbors and American troops stationed in the Middle East but eventually the U.S. mainland itself.
Many experts debated when, not if, Iran would acquire nuclear weapons. The mullahs claimed peaceful intentions, but for them, lying and deceit are routine statecraft.
Through the 2010s, I consistently criticized the President Barack Obama-era Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) as dangerously naive. Iran was clearly cheating. The deal did not address the nuclear problem. It ignored the regime's sponsorship of terror organizations attacking Israel and American interests in the region and worldwide. The decades-long list of Americans killed by Iran or its proxies, plus hundreds of U.S. soldiers killed or wounded by IEDs made with Iranian technology, provided a clear basis for military action against this radical regime.
Yet the Iran deal offered sunset clauses and limited inspections. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented persuasive evidence of Iran's cheating. Still, much of the civilized world yawned.
In 2017, I argued that pulling out of this deeply flawed deal was necessary. In 2019, amid Iran's tanker attacks and centrifuge advances, I again warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would be catastrophic. One post said: "Given Iran's threats, attacks on shipping, and role as the world's top terror exporter one can only imagine a world in which Iran possesses nuclear weapons. Iran must be stopped. And if America will not stop Iran, Israel will."
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Even when last June, President Donald Trump took out three nuclear sites — the deeply buried Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — and the mullahs immediately attempted to restart their program. They didn't get the message: There's a new sheriff in town, and his name is not Biden or Obama.
Fast-forward to the present: The U.S.-Israeli operation has launched massive strikes across Iran, killing the supreme leader and dozens of top officials. The regime itself may fall. Trump's decisive action, in coordination with Israel, has finally addressed what weak diplomacy prolonged for far too long.
It's about realism. The ayatollahs' first loyalty is to an apocalyptic ideology that sees nuclear capability as a tool for global dominance against nonbelievers.
Had Iran been dealt with a long time ago, the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of hundreds more by Hamas — an Iranian terror client — might have been avoided. Some 40 Americans were kidnapped or killed, too. When is enough enough?
Critics on the left, with the notable exception of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) — and some critics on the right — are crying "unconstitutional!" They warn of "another endless war," something Trump campaigned against. Where were those voices when Iran blatantly continued to advance its nuclear program under the Iran deal? Where were they as Iran's proxies attacked U.S. forces and interests? What happened to the left's purported concern about the oppression of women's rights?
Even some of Trump's harshest conservative critics now applaud the joint U.S.-Israel attack on Iran. Washington Post columnist George Will, a longtime Trump detractor, praised the operation for restoring "the credibility of U.S. deterrence." Will wrote, "At last, the credibility of U.S. deterrence is being restored."
Similarly, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, a rabid Republican never-Trumper, defended the strikes for "doing the free world a favor." Stephens wrote that Trump and Netanyahu administered justice and supplied hope to Iranians longing for freedom, and that the U.S. is stronger when anti-American dictators have solid reasons to fear our wrath.
This is about strength over appeasement. Reagan understood this in dealing with the Soviets. Trump applied it here. Trump's redlines are, in fact, redlines. The result? A regime that once wrote "Death to America" on its missiles faces collapse and, hopefully, an internal uprising to follow that gives the Iranian people a real future without fear or oppression.
The joint strike wasn't the start of endless conflict; it was the end of dangerous inaction. For that, history will eventually say, "Well done."
Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host.
Editor's Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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