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President Donald Trump did not start this war. The Islamic Republic did just that – on November 4, 1979, when it attacked the American Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. For nearly a century, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism has killed and maimed more Americans than any other terrorist state in the world. It even conspired twice to kill Trump himself.
The regime’s attack against the United States and our allies is not a series of isolated incidents, but a single, continuous war waged by the mullahs for 47 years. From the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing to the Iranian IEDs that killed 603 Americans in Iraq — nearly one in six American military deaths — the regime has operated under the assumption that Washington has no stomach for response. For years that bet paid off. Tehran interpreted restraint not as discretion but as concession.
From the October 7 killing of about 1,200 people by Hamas, including 46 Americans to the 180-plus attacks on American soldiers last year, the regime has been telling us what it wants: death in America.
To face this impending threat, every American president since Jimmy Carter has chosen to kick the can down the road, calling it diplomacy. That changed in 2020 when Trump ordered a strike against Qassim Soleimani, the head of the regime’s terrorist organization and IED mastermind. The Washington foreign policy class condemned it, but the Iranian people celebrated it.
MICHAEL OREN: IRAN HAS WARNED AMERICA FOR 47 YEARS — TIME TO END IT
In this US Navy handout, the USS Thomas Hudner fires a Tomahawk surface-to-surface attack missile in support of Operation Epic Fury on March 1, 2026, at sea. (US Navy/via Getty Images)
When the regime killed more than 40,000 protesters in January 2026 and tried to hide this brutality from the world by shutting down the Internet, people again looked to Trump for help. He answered their call by doing what his predecessors had never dared to do, moving “to put an end to this danger that has been running together for a long time.”
The case for action was strong. Aside from humanitarian reasons, Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, has revealed details of the discussions he and Special Peace Envoy Jared Kushner led to the conflict. Their Iranian counterparts have proudly admitted that they have stockpiled enough uranium for 11 nuclear bombs, which could be available in a few weeks. When the US offered to supply Iran with free nuclear fuel to stop enrichment, Tehran refused. Witkoff concluded that Iran had no intention of doing anything other than arming itself.
This nuclear threat is built on decades of deception. The regime hid the tubes from IAEA inspectors so it could secretly restore the Arak reactor. It hid the entire nuclear archive from negotiators (later discovered by Israel), and stonewalled international investigators inspecting undeclared nuclear materials and activities in multiple locations.
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The Obama Administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) did not oblige the Islamic Republic. Instead, it authorized and financed Iran’s gradual pursuit of nuclear weapons. Trump accurately called the JCPOA “the worst deal ever negotiated.” He left the deal in 2018, launching a campaign of intense pressure, denying the government more than $200 billion in oil revenue that could have funded terrorist activities.
President Joe Biden mysteriously abandoned the strategy, giving Iran breathing room to accelerate enrichment — until Trump struck the regime’s nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan last June during Operation Midnight Hammer. When Iran’s negotiators bragged about their stockpiles ready to be bombed, telling Witkoff, “We’re not going to give you diplomatically what you wouldn’t take militarily,” Trump launched Operation Epic Fury.
The goals of this program – a parallel to Trump’s doctrine of “peace with strength” – were set by the Department of Defense: to destroy Iran’s missile and production facilities, to destroy its naval and naval infrastructure, to cut off terrorist proxy networks, to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by targeting related sites and to degrade the state’s IR defense facility. defenses, missiles and munitions for drones and airfields.
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So far, the results are ahead of schedule. In a joint operation with Israel, Ali Khamenei, the leader of the regime, was killed along with most of his inner members and the top military commander – including the heads of the IRGC and Basij, and the top salesman Ali Larijani.
More than 80% of Iran’s missile assets and production capacity were destroyed, along with much of its naval and port infrastructure. Iran’s proxy financing networks – the conduits that have kept Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas armed and active – have been cut off. Nuclear-related sites across the country have been decommissioned. At least 49 senior government officials were killed or removed from the battlefield.
Their Iranian counterparts have proudly admitted that they have stockpiled enough uranium for 11 nuclear bombs, which could be available in a few weeks.
This unprecedented destruction of the regime’s repressive forces prepares the battlefield and creates unprecedented conditions in the streets for the Iranian people to rise up and challenge the mullahs directly.
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The work is not finished. But it’s on its way. Staying the course will kill us.
President Trump spoke directly to the Iranian people in his speech introducing the plan: “[T]The hour of your freedom is at hand…When we are done, take your government. It will be yours to take.” That moment is near.
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Smoke and flames rise from the site of airstrikes at an oil depot in Tehran on March 7, 2026. (Sasan Images / Middle East / AFP via Getty Images)
Trump’s strategy is working. His legs don’t move and his commitment doesn’t waver: “We don’t want to leave early, right? … We don’t want to come back every two years.” Anti-government measures have a 47-year record of failure. History will confirm Trump’s determination to end it.
As Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the leader of Iran’s democratic opposition, put it: Donald Trump will be remembered as a leader who stood with the Iranian people when it mattered most – and the greatest liberators of history.
