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President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are playing for keeps with the Iranian regime this time. The days of the fanatical Islamist theocracy, whose terrorist proxies have the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands and that has slaughtered more than thirty thousand of its own citizens in cold blood, are numbered. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead. Other top Iranian leaders, including the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, and Iranian defense minister, Aziz Nasirzadeh, have met the same fate.
On February 28th, the United States and Israel launched what the U.S. calls “Operation Epic Fury” against the regime. In addition to targeting the regime’s leadership and nuclear enrichment sites, they destroyed ballistic missiles, missile launchers, and naval facilities, as well as hitting the regime’s military and security infrastructure.
In remarks that President Trump delivered at the White House on March 2nd prior to a Medal of Honor ceremony, he said that the United States is “already substantially ahead of our time projections.” While he said that the operation could take four to five weeks, he made it clear that “Whatever the time is, it’s OK. Whatever it takes.”
President Trump said in a social media post on February 28th that the military operation is intended “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.” He said that his administration “has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region.” Even so,” he added, “and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”
Sadly, at least four American service members have lost their lives to date and several others have suffered injuries.
In his February 28th social media post, the president asked the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Iranian armed forces, and the police to “lay down your weapons.” He offered them “total immunity” if they did. Otherwise, he warned, they would “face certain death.”
President Trump also addressed the Iranian people directly: “For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.”
It is not as if the Iranian regime did not have plenty of opportunity to avoid this fate and survive for another day. The Trump administration had assembled a massive U.S. force in the Middle East as a signal while trying the diplomatic route first. President Trump repeatedly warned that he would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon and continued to demand that the regime give up its nuclear enrichment program. But the regime’s leaders did not listen. Instead, there is evidence that after Operation Midnight Hammer largely destroyed three nuclear sites in Iran last June, the regime chose to restore its aggressive nuclear program and build more long-range ballistic missiles.
The Iranian regime stalled for time during negotiations to end Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, believing that President Trump was bluffing when he said that he might order military force against the regime if the talks fail. The regime lost its bet. Khamenei and other top Iranian leaders paid with their lives.
Iran has fired waves of ballistic missiles and drones in retaliation against civilian population centers in Israel and into the territories of Arab countries with lethal results. One ace that the regime has up its sleeve is the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, assuming they still have the military assets to do so. Tasnim, a news outlet affiliated with the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, has claimed that this crucial global shipping lane has been “effectively closed,” but the extent to which this is true and for how long remains uncertain.
Notably, Russia and China so far are holding back from helping their Iranian allies, except for their hollow rhetoric condemning the U.S. and Israel at an afternoon Security Council meeting that was held on February 28th.
If Iran’s leaders thought that they would get support from fellow Muslims in the Arab world, they bet wrong again. This was especially so after the regime launched military attacks inside some of those countries to ostensibly target U.S. military bases there but that also hit civilian facilities.
The Saudi Arabian Press Agency issued a statement declaring that “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia condemned and denounced in the strongest terms the blatant Iranian aggression and the flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Qatar, the State of Kuwait, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Saudi Arabia affirmed its full solidarity with and unwavering support for the brotherly countries, and its readiness to place all its capabilities at their disposal in support of any measures they may undertake… The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia called on the international community to condemn these blatant attacks and to take all firm measures necessary to confront Iranian violations that undermine the security and stability of the region.”
Predictably, senior United Nations officials condemned the attacks. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for “an immediate cessation of hostilities and de-escalation.” He urged “all parties to return immediately to the negotiating table.”
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk echoed the Secretary General’s remarks. “I call for restraint and implore all parties to see reason, to de-escalate, and for a return to the ‘negotiating table,’” he said.
To what end? Giving the Iranian regime more time to cross the point of no return and build nuclear bombs with their highly enriched uranium upgraded to a weapon-grade level? To see more unarmed Iranian civilians peacefully protesting shot to death at close range?
Congressional Democrats, with the notable exception of Pennsylvania’s Democrat Senator John Fetterman, are stridently objecting to President Trump’s combat operation against the Iranian regime without prior congressional approval under the War Powers Resolution of 1973. They are demanding a vote in short order on the military hostilities ordered by President Trump, a symbolic exercise of virtue-signaling at best. President Trump did not need prior congressional approval of Operation Epic Fury under the War Powers Resolution and still does not need such approval at this stage of the hostilities. All that is required is notification to Congress within 48 hours, which has been done.
According to a senior U.S. official, President Trump acted decisively to prevent an imminent threat from what U.S. intelligence indicated could have been the Iranian regime’s preemptive deployment of ballistic missiles.
“We had analysis that basically told us [that] if we sat back and waited to get hit first, the amount of casualties and damage would be substantially higher than if we acted in a preemptive, defensive way to prevent those launches from occurring,” the senior US official said, as quoted by The Times of Israel. “We are not going to be held hostage by them, and we are not going to let them hit us first because it would have substantially increased the risk to our troops in the region and to our allies.”
In other words, President Trump had reasonable grounds to launch what he considered to be a war of necessity.
President Trump’s critics should consult the Obama administration’s legal opinion regarding then-President Obama’s authority as commander in chief to direct the use of military force in Libya without congressional approval. The Obama administration memo cited various historical precedents of operations that were conducted “without specific prior authorizing legislation,” including air patrols and airstrikes in Bosnia (1993-1995) and a bombing campaign in Yugoslavia (1999) conducted during the Clinton administration.
Operation Epic Fury was necessary to launch to prevent the imminent threat that the Iranian regime posed with mounting numbers of ballistic missiles it was stockpiling for aggressive use. Operation Epic Fury is also a just war to thwart the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism that massacred more than 30,000 of its own people while working feverishly to become a nuclear armed state.