For decades, dating all the way back to 1979, US presidents, including Donald Trump, and many Americans have been dreaming of the day we would finally avenge the murderous Iranian Islamist regime. Ever since dozens of Americans were taken hostage for more than a year, and Ayatollah Khomeini led the call for death to America and its ally Israel, it has been crystal clear that, for the sake of Middle Eastern, American, and European security, the regime had to be toppled. But efforts to remove the head of the snake over the years were few, far between, and unsuccessful.
Finally, after 47 years of watching the mullahs and their enforcers and proxies wreak havoc across the Middle East as the long-acknowledged world leader in terrorism, Trump decided to pull the trigger on an audacious invasion, with a full-on assault on the country’s leaders, military capacity, and nuclear aspirations. But often lost in the day-to-day, on-the-ground coverage of the conflict is the 20,000-foot view, namely, how this mission represents the final piece of a geopolitical jigsaw puzzle being assembled by the president.
The Trump Trifecta
The first piece of the puzzle was to assist Israel in crippling the Iranian military, winning the 12-day war, and securing the release of Israeli hostages held for more than two years by Hamas, a proxy for Iran. Next, Trump built on the Abraham Accords between Israel and pro-American Arab states during his first term to create the Board of Peace, binding Israel with a host of Muslim neighbors to rebuild Gaza, while isolating Iran as an outlaw state.
The president then unleashed an audacious military campaign with a strike in the dead of night, sending bunker-busters to Iran and setting the country’s nuclear program back for months or years. Then, he took aim at Iran’s most reliable partner in our Western Hemisphere, Venezuela, in a daring mission to seize dictator and drug lord Nicolás Maduro, bring him to justice in the United States, restore the country’s oil industry, and enable a pathway to the restoration of democracy. Finally, Trump unleashed the third leg of the trifecta with Operation Epic Fury, decapitating Iran’s Supreme Leader and high command and obliterating its navy and air force.
In response, the Iranian Islamist “experts” in charge of selecting a new Supreme Leader are demonstrating that they have neither accepted nor learned a single thing from the overwhelming military force that has halted their reign of terror. They have named the son of the slain Supreme Leader to succeed his father, presenting their decision as if nothing has changed while their world crumbles around them. But the reality is that the remnants of the regime are now running on empty, less able to defend themselves with each passing day. The United States and Israel have seized total, unchallenged command of the skies above Iran and the waters beside it. You don’t have to read tea leaves to understand which side is going to win this war.
While it may take weeks, and the remnants of the shattered regime will certainly lash out and sow death and discord by any means available, exactly how will those clinging to power hope to survive? They may be able to run and hide for a time, but the US-Israeli dragnet will be targeting the lot of them. And they can hardly count on the support of the overwhelming mass of Iranian citizens who have bitterly opposed the fanatical regime, thousands of whom were gunned down in cold blood for daring to demonstrate in the streets.
A New World Order
Eventually, the smoke will clear from Trump’s dizzying array of military operations, and what’s left will amount to far more than just a neutered Iran and a restored Venezuela. Consider the cascading consequences of Trump’s trifecta. He essentially delivered a two-fer in Venezuela, taking down the most committed anti-American regime in our backyard and depriving the Communists ruling Cuba of the oil vital to propping up their ruinous rule. Most experts agree that the question in Cuba is no longer if the Communists will finally be driven out but when.
Venezuela supplied cheap, sanctioned oil to Cuba, which in turn provided secret police muscle to protect and enforce the will of the regime. But Venezuela and Cuba had something even more important in common. They served as partners and brothers-in-arms with Iran and China, and even Russia to some degree. It’s as if these totalitarian regimes in Central and South America put out a welcome mat reading “all tyrants welcome here.” But that ship has now sailed into the sunset, depriving our greatest adversary of the foothold it had in the West.
Meanwhile, the central question of the war, now ten days old, is no longer whether we will be victorious in our military operations but whether a moderate regime can take hold and return Iran to at least a semblance of its former greatness. Some are predicting a civil war between factions in Iran that are competing to claim power. But in the worst-case scenario of such an internal conflict overtaking the country, could the end result possibly be any worse than the crumbling regime it will replace? Iran’s military capacity will have been severely, perhaps fatally, depleted, meaning that even a corrupt or authoritarian government will have little power to continue threatening its neighbors.
Since the 47th president took office, the worldwide transformation he has driven represents nothing less than a sea change. Most of Iran’s neighbors have long lived in fear, afraid to express their opposition to the Iranian regime. But now they are emboldened to seek peace. With the potentially mortal threat of the Islamist regime in Iran no longer hanging over the entire region like an ominous dark cloud, the perpetually fearful residents of many nations will finally sleep in peace. Meanwhile, the capture of Maduro deprives Iran of a critical base of operations just to our south, with the United States filling the vacuum and flipping the balance of power. In the end, the United States and its allies can finally steer their attention away from the Middle East and toward China and the rest of the world, secure in the knowledge that our children will not have to live in fear of nuclear annihilation by an enemy committed to the death of America.
