All hell seems like it&#8217;s about to break loose again in the Middle East.
Let’s review the timeline. The United States entered into a ceasefire with Iran. The idea was to open negotiations for two weeks and then move toward a solution on nuclear weapons, with Iran giving up its nukes, ballistic missiles, and support for terrorist proxies.
It seemed as though there was some pretty significant movement. The president deployed JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner to Islamabad, Pakistan. They came back and said there was no deal to be made.
Then it appeared as though there might be some movement after all, because the United States imposed a blockade on Iran&#8217;s blockade. Iran had basically put a blockade on goods in the Strait of Hormuz, harassing shipping and preventing oil from exiting the Persian Gulf.
But in the aftermath of the failed first round of talks, America blockaded Iranian ships entering and exiting the Strait of Hormuz.
That put the Iranian government in significant economic trouble, which led to backchannel negotiations. On Friday, both the United States government and the Iranian government announced that the Strait of Hormuz was open.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
President Trump said that a deal was very close, that Iran would ship its nuclear dust out, making a deal with the United States to permanently end their nuclear program, that they would stop supporting foreign terrorist organizations, etc.
This led to what appears to be a pretty open split between some of the negotiators and the people actually in charge, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is essentially the Praetorian guard for the mullahs. There have been a lot of rumors about the split. In fact, one of the reasons why the negotiations in Islamabad led by Vance didn&#8217;t succeed, according to Vance and members of the American side of the negotiations, was that the Foreign Ministry was making promises they couldn&#8217;t keep. They would go back, and the IRGC would then pretend that none of that ever happened.
Iran tried to tie its own ceasefire with the United States to Israel stopping its attacks on Hezbollah in retaliation for Hezbollah firing thousands of rockets into northern Israel. They tried to claim the reason that they had opened the Strait of Hormuz was because Israel had stopped its action in Lebanon, as opposed to the real reason, which is because the United States was blockading all of the oil going in and out of Iran.
On Saturday, things got heated again because the Iranian navy informed ships that Hormuz was shut.
President Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116433000897070863">noted</a>:
<blockquote>Today, an Iranian-flagged cargo ship named TOUSKA, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried to get past our Naval Blockade, and it did not go well for them. The U.S. Navy Guided Missile Destroyer USS SPRUANCE intercepted the TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman, and gave them fair warning to stop.
The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engine room. Right now, U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel. The TOUSKA is under U.S. Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship, and are seeing what’s on board!</blockquote>
What is likely to happen next is that Iran will remain intransigent. The president is likely to authorize further military action to both significantly hamper or destroy Iran&#8217;s economic capacity, and to either bomb every possible nuclear facility into complete rubble, unleash special operations in line with the Israelis, and go get the nuclear material, or both.
That is the most likely next step, and it will probably happen sooner rather than later if the Iranians do not get on the clock and start negotiating rapidly.

President Trump Departs Washington For Charlottesville

Deadline Tehran: All Hell About To Break Loose

Donald Trump

Iran

Jared Kushner

JD Vance

Middle East

Opinion

Pakistan

Strait of Hormuz

You&#8217;ve been lied to.
You&#8217;ve been hearing for weeks now from all of the doubters, all of the so-called “panicans.” But here is what you are not going to hear anywhere else: not just that President Trump is winning in Iran, but why he is winning.
He came in with four goals. He has now achieved three of them, and the fourth is on the way.
Iran had three methods of resistance. President Trump has basically eliminated two of them. And the third is about to end.
People keep assuming that the goal of the war in Iran was regime change. No. Regime change is a means; it is not the actual end. In a certain sense, if the regime were to change its behavior dramatically, you wouldn&#8217;t need to change the regime.
Yes, if there were to be a regime change, it would pretty much achieve all the goals all at once. 
But you don&#8217;t have to achieve all of the goals of the war with regime change.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2408?elementPosition=2&amp;row=5&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
The president and Secretary of State Marco Rubio <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2039408073039630728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2039408073039630728%7Ctwgr%5Eb81529da64e58116a12923b7165a9b8bf97313a6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Freleases%2F2026%2F04%2Fpresident-trumps-clear-and-unchanging-objectives-drive-decisive-success-against-iranian-regime%2F">laid out the goals</a>:
<ol>
<li>Destroy the vast majority of Iran&#8217;s forward military capacity. Done. We have defenestrated their foreign military capacity, their missile base is basically gone. Their air force, gone. Their navy, gone.</li>
<li>Wipe out their defense industrial base. Done. The United States and Israel have wiped out their steel foundries. They have hit all of their missile factories. They have hit their missile launchers.</li>
<li>Keep Iran’s economy in a stranglehold, while depriving it of the means to rebuild. Done. The Iranian economy is defunct. Nothing has been getting in.</li>
<li>End the Iranian nuclear threat. Pending. </li>
</ol>
Three of those four have basically been done. It&#8217;s the Iranian nuclear threat that remains on the table.
Okay, say the panicans and the liars, but somehow Iran has gotten stronger.
This is what we might call the Obi-Wan Kenobi theory of foreign policy: “If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”
It doesn&#8217;t work that way in real life. When you strike someone down, they usually stay down. And if they recover, you can strike them down again. 
The spirit of Iran is not going to teach Luke Skywalker how to blow up the Death Star. That&#8217;s not how this works. It is not clear how you get stronger by being alienated from every single country in the region, from Jews to Muslims, or how, somehow, you&#8217;re getting stronger if all your leaders are dead and you&#8217;re walking around as a regime pretending that an impotent, comatose dude with no leg is your actual leader: “Weekend at Mullahs.”
Or how you get stronger when your missile launch capacity has been so degraded, so radically degraded, that you&#8217;re being forced to physically unbury the missile launchers you buried. 
They buried a bunch of missile launchers to hide them, and now they&#8217;re being forced to unbury them just so they have something to shoot.
We can see them doing that; if there&#8217;s another round here, we will just blow those up, too.
How do you get stronger if your navy is at the bottom of the sea or if your Air Force, which was a bunch of Vietnam-era crap, is now a bunch of shrapnel? How are you stronger when your economy is totally nonexistent, when in a few weeks you&#8217;re not going to have money to pay your IRGC thugs?
Okay, fine, say the panicans and the liars; The Iranians will still win. They will win by outlasting us.
Staying alive isn&#8217;t winning unless we&#8217;re doing “The Hunger Games,” which we&#8217;re not.
To take a similar example: Is Cuba winning right now?
The Cuban communist regime has survived. Are they winning or are they on their last legs? It’s pretty clear they are losing.
And so is the regime in Tehran. The regime in Tehran had three methods of resistance, and they’ve been building all three for years and years.
First, the so-called “Axis of Resistance.” This included all the terror proxies they placed throughout the region, from Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houthis to terror groups in Iraq. All of those members of the “Axis of Resistance” were supposed to be Iran’s forward army. That was their forward capacity.
But since October 7, 2023, Israel has steadily degraded or destroyed that forward capacity.
Hamas is stuck in a small section of Gaza. They may be trying to rebuild, but it won’t matter. Israel will go in and blow them up again. Hezbollah has been greatly reduced as a power in the region, and now it is in danger of complete evisceration. The Houthis could have acted at any time during this war, but they didn’t, and they didn’t for a reason. They knew that if they had, they would have been obliterated.
So the terror proxies Iran had been funding for generations were basically defenestrated. That was their first mode of striking back.
Second was the nuclear program, which they were attempting to develop. They were racing toward a nuclear bomb to protect their regime. That is what caused all of this to happen. If they had given up their nuclear program years ago, they would have had normalized relations with a lot of different countries. The sanctions would not be on them. But they decided they were going to race forward with their nuclear program, and they got the hell bombed out of them.
Third: the Strait of Hormuz. Shutting that down was supposed to be their trump card. That was supposed to stop everything.
And this is where all of the panicans and all of the liars and the people who hate Trump and hate Israel and all the rest started saying, “The Iranians really showed you. They shut the Strait of Hormuz!”
It’s open now.
Remember that time when they said that we would never be able to open the Strait?
What did we do? We said if you close it, we are going to stop all ships going in and out of Iranian ports, and then you won&#8217;t have an economy, and you’ll be dead in the water.
Guess what? Within a week and a half, they opened the strait.
They stopped messing around in the strait because they didn&#8217;t have the forward operating capacity. Their navy was, in fact, at the bottom of the sea. The Persian Gulf was littered with the hulks of their ships. The reality is that they used their pathetic mine-laying capacities — and I say pathetic because they were actually just putting mines in the water and losing them out there — and we are now de-mining the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump wrote, “I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I told them to stay away unless they just want to load up their ships with oil. They were useless when needed. A paper tiger.”
Fact.
What really happened here is that the Strait of Hormuz closing hurt the Chinese far more than it hurt us. The Chinese presumably brought pressure to bear via Pakistan on the Iranians, and the Iranians decided to open the Strait.
Not only that, oil prices have now plunged dramatically. We&#8217;ve been told that that was the chief element that was somehow going to undermine the war.
Nope.
President Trump is winning, big-time.
And don’t let the panicans and liars convince you otherwise.

President Trump Departs Washington Enroute To Miami, Florida

Trump Crushes Doubters On Iran 

Ben Shapiro

Marco Rubio

America is breaking down into two parties.
I’m not speaking of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
I’m speaking of the American Exceptionalist Party and the bipartisan Grievance Party.
The former believes in American exceptionalism, that America is awesome, that we have historically been awesome, and that we will be awesome again if we do the hard things that we must do.
Conversely, the Grievance Party believes America is not awesome, never was awesome, and will only be awesome if we fundamentally rewrite the American bargain — and also retreat from the world for our great sins.
That battle between the American Exceptionalist and the Grievance Party — Left and Right — will define our future as Americans.
And right now, that battle is being fought over Iran.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
The American Exceptionalist Party may argue over tax rates. We may argue over the prosecution of particular wars, whether it&#8217;s to do them or how to do them. But we generally agree that America has the best constitutional system, the strongest and best free-market economy, and the most powerful military in all of human history.
We know that America, in order to preserve the freest and most prosperous nation in world history, sometimes has to do the tough stuff — but doing the tough stuff is part of what makes America great.
Then there are the members of the Grievance Party. They&#8217;re on the Left, and they&#8217;re on the Right. They&#8217;re the people President Trump calls “low IQ,” and they&#8217;ve become largely indistinguishable from one another, from Hasan Piker on the Left to Tucker Carlson on the Right.
They seem to believe that America&#8217;s constitutional system is a mockery and a sham, that our free market economy is actually a rigged oligarchy created by nefarious and evil elites at the expense of the poor, that our military is a gigantic terrorist operation, and that the world would somehow be better off if America abandoned the international playing field.
The Grievance Party is gaining adherents because the world feels chaotic.
And when the world feels chaotic, there is comfort in grievance.
When you feel like nothing is in your control, it is easy and politically productive to blame mysterious forces beyond your control. That also happens to be a recipe for failure, both individually and nationally, which is what the propagandists for the Grievance Party members are openly rooting for. They root for the United States to fail in its battle to stop the world&#8217;s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran —an apocalyptic death cult that cries “Death to America” — from obtaining nuclear weapons.
They want America to lose. They want America to give up power to China and to Russia. They openly say so.
But here&#8217;s the thing: America is not losing. And that is because American Exceptionalists know that in a chaotic world, the only answer is to stand up for American values and to do that without apology, with strength, and with courage.
President Trump is doing that right now in Iran.
If you listened to the low-IQ Grievance Party propagandists and their left-wing legacy media counterparts over the course of the last week, you might have thought that President Trump was caving in, that the ceasefire was Trump chickening out, that it was TACO time.
But it wasn’t.
Over the weekend, it turned out some of us were right, and some people were wrong, because he didn&#8217;t cave in.
And now, he is holding Iran&#8217;s feet to the fire, and they have really, really serious problems.
The United States still has a lot of cards left to play. We could embargo all of the oil that is coming out of Iran. We can blockade it. We could also just blow up Kharg Island and create a permanent problem for Iran. The Israelis could do a special operation and grab the nuclear materials right now.
And, as the Iranian economy collapses, the regime is in very, very serious trouble.
This raises the only possibility Iran has left, and that is to convince members of the Grievance Party that if they complain loud enough, the president will stop.
The reality, always and forever, is that Americans don&#8217;t like wars until we win them. That&#8217;s it. Even the wars that we do like at the very beginning, if we start to lose them, Americans don&#8217;t like them anymore.
Americans like winning. And we don&#8217;t like losing. It is that simple.
Americans are willing to undergo this for a temporary period of time, as they have said over and over and over.
But members of the Grievance Party refuse to understand any of this, and spend all of their time trying to trot out the propaganda of our enemies.
There are many pragmatic questions we can ask about whether particular measures in an intervention are good or bad, productive or unproductive, or even counterproductive. But the main difference that we are seeing emerge in American politics right now — and this will decide the future of the country — is between the American Exceptionalists, who believe that America was good, is good and will be good again, and the people who believe that America was never good fundamentally, gave up the ghost decades ago, and that the only cure for the United States is, as Barack Obama once suggested, fundamental change.
This has been a battle long in coming. The fact that it has infused a little part of the Right, a splintered fragment of the Right, is not a great shock in a time of social media brainwashed algorithmic nonsense.
But it is the fight. It is the fight.
And President Trump has no intention of losing.

UFC 327: Procházka v Ulberg

Trump Fights For America’s Future

Hasan Piker

Israel

Tucker Carlson

An American journalist has reportedly been freed after being held captive for more than a week by an Iran-backed militia, with the group demanding she &#8220;leave the country immediately&#8221; as a condition of her release.
In late March, Shelly Kittleson was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-video-shows-moment-american-female-journalist-is-kidnapped-in-iraq?author=Nathan+Gay&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=WATCH%3A+Video+Shows+Moment+American+Female+Journalist+Is+Kidnapped+In+Iraq">stopped</a> in the middle of a road in Baghdad by a group of armed men who then threw her into a van and fled the city. The kidnappers were later identified as members of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shiite Iraqi militia.
Kataib Hezbollah said in a Tuesday statement on Telegram that it had decided to release Kittleson following productive discussions with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. The militia said they had an “appreciation of the patriotic stances” of the prime minister, and released the journalist &#8220;on the condition that she leaves the country immediately.”
Middle Eastern outlet Al-Monitor, which Kittleson worked for prior to her kidnapping, <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/04/us-journalist-shelly-kittleson-released-iran-backed-kataib-hezbollah-iraq">reported</a> that two Iraqi officials confirmed Kittleson&#8217;s release, and according to one official, Kittleson was in the Iraqi prime minister&#8217;s office on Tuesday.
The officials declined to give further details on her release, and neither the Iraqi nor U.S. government has verified Kittleson&#8217;s release at the time of publication.
Alhurra, an Arabic outlet based in Washington, D.C., <a href="https://alhurra.com/en/17856" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> Monday, citing Iraqi intelligence sources, that Kittleson had been moved to a militia-controlled area in Iraq&#8217;s Babil province — which is known as a hub for smuggling operations and attacks on U.S. forces — where she was believed to be held as a &#8220;human shield&#8221; against American strikes. The outlet also reported that Kataib Hezbollah was seeking the release of four of its members detained by Iraqi authorities for their role in attacks on Syria. It is unclear if the Iraqi government met this demand.
Kataib Hezbollah released footage purporting to show Kittleson earlier Tuesday, with her supposedly admitting to gathering intelligence on Iranian-backed militias for the U.S. government. The unverified video would be the first sign of life of Kittleson since her abduction.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Iraqi Hezbollah releases footage of American journalist Shelly Kittelson in captivity, showing her “admitting” she gathered intelligence on Shia militias for the U.S. consul in Baghdad.
They say she will be freed and must leave Iraq immediately. <a href="https://t.co/M8nTZaFNRC">https://t.co/M8nTZaFNRC</a> <a href="https://t.co/bUiqbTiCCm">pic.twitter.com/bUiqbTiCCm</a>
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) <a href="https://twitter.com/Osint613/status/2041561782574084606?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Kittleson, a journalist specializing in the Middle East who has reported for the BBC, Foreign Relations, and POLITICO, was in Baghdad reporting on Iraqi politics for the outlet Al-Monitor at the time of her kidnapping.

TOPSHOT-IRAQ-MEDIA-SECURITY-KIDNAPPING

American Journalist Released By Iran-Backed Militia, Sets Exit Deadline

Crime

Iran war

Iraq

kidnapping

World

Ignore those who are preaching doom. America rocks.
America is experiencing a totally exceptional moment.
This country just kicks ass.
We are sending human beings around the moon for the first time in decades.
We are performing some of the most extraordinary military operations in all of human history, killing terrorists, delivering the most targeted strikes from the most sophisticated weaponry ever built.
We are rescuing pilots in Mission: Impossible-style operations.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2402-sub?elementPosition=3&amp;row=5&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
On Monday, the Artemis II astronauts made history by traveling farther than any human being has ever gone.
<a href="https://www.wsj.com/science/space-astronomy/artemis-astronauts-are-going-where-no-human-has-gone-before-99962e92">According</a> to The Wall Street Journal:
<blockquote>Just before 2 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, the astronauts on Artemis II steered their Orion craft into the record books, flying more than 248,655 miles from Earth, which is the furthest that human beings have ever gone.</blockquote>
Human beings are doing unbelievable things because America kicks absolute ass.
President Trump called the Artemis crew to congratulate them.
“Tell me, what is the most unforgettable part of this really historic day?” he asked. “The whole world is watching and listening. Please tell me.”
“Mr. President, this call is certainly special to all of us, and we really have a lot of faith in our administrator, Jared Isaacman, who is with you,”  Commander Reid Wiseman responded. “We appreciate his leadership in NASA and in the international community. We are doing great things and we are proud to be a part of &#8230; I have to tell you, as we came around the near side of the moon, seeing all the sights that we&#8217;ve seen from Earth for all of our lives, but we&#8217;re seeing them from a different perspective, and then we started to get a glimpse of the &#8230;  And we saw sights, oriental sights that no human has ever seen before, not even in Apollo, and that was amazing for us. And then the surprise of the day: We just came out of an eclipse where the sun, moon and the entire dark moon, about that big, right out the window that we were watching, we could see the corona of the sun, and then we could see the planet train line up, and then Mars, and all of us commented how excited we are to watch this nation and this planet become a two-planet species.”
America rocks.
And you know what? It&#8217;s part and parcel of an inspiring vision for the United States. I know we don&#8217;t talk about the United States that way, or haven&#8217;t in recent years, but America is an unbelievably inspiring place.
That&#8217;s the reason why everyone is clamoring to get here, not just because we can put human beings 250,000 miles away going around the moon, but also because when people come here, they are inspired to create and to build and to build better lives for themselves and their families.
It’s because the American system offers them that opportunity, and because America is, in fact, the guarantor of security on planet Earth. It’s because the United States, the same United States that takes humans and puts them 250,000 miles away around the moon, is the same United States that stands up to the thuggish, theocratic tyrants in Iran who want to develop nuclear weapons and develop into intercontinental ballistic missiles, and who wish to spread terrorism all over the region against us and our allies.
We stand up to them.
What President Trump is providing is an inspiring vision of what the United States should be.
And guess what? We are making it happen in real time.
The president has provided the Iranian regime an off-ramp over and over and over and over again. This is the part that everyone seems to just ignore: If Iran did not wish to be in the gun sights of the United States military, all they would have to do is stop developing nuclear weapons, stop developing long-range ballistic missiles, and stop funding terrorism.
That is all they would have to do. That&#8217;s it. And they could have done this at any time for 47 years.
They could have done this at any time. They would have been reintegrated into the world economy. They would have been treated as a member of the family of nations. Their concerns would have been heard.
Instead, they decided that they were going to double down on their theocratic tyranny, that they were going to rush toward a nuclear weapon, that they were going to back every major terrorist group in the region and beyond.
They decided to do that. That was their decision.
The difference now is that this president understands that it is not in the interest of the United States to allow that cancer to fester, that the gangrenous limb that is the Iranian cannot be allowed to poison the entire region and beyond.
That&#8217;s why the president took the stand that he is taking right now.
And guess what? We are kicking the hell out of the Iranian military. We are. There is no standard in military history by which we are not kicking the hell out of them. We have put their entire navy underwater. We have taken their entire air force out of the sky. We have taken their ballistic missile launcher capacity to near zero. We have destroyed their steel factories. We have been hitting specific Basij checkpoints in Tehran. We&#8217;ve been bombing every nuclear facility we can find. 
And still, President Trump is offering them an off-ramp; all they would have to do is open the Strait of Hormuz and give up their nukes.
Do it, and we’re done. The war would be over. That&#8217;s all.
They won&#8217;t do it.
Ask yourself: Why? We would give them a permanent cease-fire if they opened up the Strait of Hormuz and gave up their nukes.
They won&#8217;t do it.
And the reason they won&#8217;t do it is because they must terrorize their people. They must rush toward a nuclear weapon to preserve their tyrannical regime, and they must harass the countries around them to gain power. They have regional ambitions not restricted to Iran in their philosophy.
This notion that radical Islam is restricted to a small portion of the world, that if only we would leave them alone, they would leave us alone, ignores the entire history of radical Islam going back roughly 1300 years.
President Trump was asked if God supports the United States’ actions.
“I do, because God is good, and because God is good and God wants to see people taken care of, God doesn&#8217;t like what&#8217;s happening,” he said of the violence perpetrated by the Iranian regime against their own people. “I don&#8217;t like what&#8217;s happening. Everyone says I enjoy (waging war)? I don&#8217;t enjoy this.”
When the president says that he thinks that God supports the United States as we take out tyrannical dictators, when we kill Ayatollah Khomeini, a mass murderer, when we try to destroy the forward function of terror groups, he is correct.
We are a great and moral nation. Whether it’s going farther than Man has ever gone before or removing evil from the world’s midst, we are a unique force in world history.
And Americans should feel justly proud of that.

President Trump Attends Opening Night Of Chicago At The Kennedy Center

Note To America Haters: Sorry, We’re Busy Kicking Ass

Artemis II

NASA

Space

U.S. Military

In the days ahead, the direction of Operation Epic Fury will become unmistakable in the targets the United States and Israel choose to strike.
The U.S.-Israeli air campaign has already delivered historic results. Our losses to enemy fire have been dramatically lower than in past major operations — far below the roughly one aircraft per day suffered in the run-up to Desert Storm. Precision strikes combined with air superiority have severely damaged Iran’s missile forces, air defenses, and naval capabilities.
The extraordinary rescue of the downed F-15E pilot and weapons systems officer — the latter extracted on Easter Sunday after going missing on Good Friday — further showcased unmatched special operations skill and real-time intelligence fusion, with operators inserted near Isfahan and a small team sortieing to a 7,000-foot ridge to recover the injured colonel under enemy pressure.
These successes set the stage for the critical phase now unfolding.
President Donald Trump’s remarks on Monday included both talks of negotiations and a threat to hit dual-use infrastructure, but the clearest indicators will be the strikes themselves in the coming hours and days.
For America and its allies, the central goals remain eliminating Iran’s nuclear and missile threat, neutralizing its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, and cutting off support for its terror proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. These elements have long formed the regime’s capacity to destabilize the region and threaten global energy security.
<div id="attachment_1059641" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1059641" class="size-large wp-image-1059641" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815-864x576.jpg" alt="Strait of Hormuz (Photo by Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2025)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Strait of Hormuz (Photo by Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2025)</div>
Iran’s center of gravity is more existential: the survival of the revolutionary regime itself.
Animated by a messianic death cult ideology that seeks to hasten the end times and the return of the 12th Hidden Imam — the Mahdi — the regime views its stockpile of 60% enriched uranium as vital insurance for that apocalyptic mission.
But preserving custody of that material increasingly forces a confrontation with the regime’s very existence, even if full regime change has not been the publicly stated goal.
Watch the target sets carefully. 
If strikes concentrate on tactical assets around the Strait of Hormuz — anti-ship missiles, coastal batteries, fast-attack craft, and related naval infrastructure — the immediate priority will be reopening vital shipping lanes and safeguarding global oil flows. This approach would focus on restoring freedom of navigation while building on gains already achieved. But, as operations against the Houthis to safeguard the Red Sea showed, it’s not easy.
But targeting dual-use infrastructure, such as bridges, power plants, and logistics nodes, would indicate sustained pressure on the regime’s ability to move forces and maintain domestic control. Such targets squeeze the theocrats’ sustainment without committing to large-scale ground operations, potentially accelerating internal strains on a population long weary of repression.
The most telling sign, however, would be systematic attacks on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij militia leadership, command nodes, and control networks. If the campaign pivots decisively in this direction, it will mark the abandonment of meaningful negotiation and a clear intent to drive this terror regime toward collapse. Air power that degrades the mullahs’ tools of internal repression — especially amid existing domestic discontent — could burst open the door for rapid regime collapse.
Only the last option — going after the regime — would likely lead to the United States recovering Iran’s enriched uranium.
Ultimately, the regime faces a binary choice: recognize the futility of defiance or cling to its apocalyptic ideology at ever greater cost. The Iranian people, long oppressed by a corrupt theocracy, could prove decisive once the regime’s instruments of control are sufficiently shattered.
Operation Epic Fury has already reshaped the battlefield in America’s favor. The strategic decisions made now — guided by a clear grasp of centers of gravity as Carl von Clausewitz described them, the hub of all power and movement — will determine whether this campaign delivers not just tactical success but lasting victory: a Middle East more secure, global commerce protected, and a dangerous regime consigned to history’s garbage pile.
What unfolds in the coming days will turn on those target choices and the intent behind them.
* * *
Chuck DeVore is the Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

TOPSHOT-US-ISRAEL-IRAN-WAR-POLITICS-TRUMP

Why What Comes Next In Iran Will Decide Everything

What Comes Next In Operation Epic Fury: By Sea And By Land, Watch The Targets Closely

Operation Epic Fury

Pete Hegseth

U.S. Navy

Do you consider yourself in a living hell right now?
We are in a war. Everyone in our country is temporarily suffering from somewhat higher gas prices. The other country has no functioning government, and is a terrorist state that shoots people in the streets.
But you can always count on the useful idiots, people who truly hate America. They think America should be less powerful in the world.
I can&#8217;t think of a single military conflict — including military conflicts with which I disagreed — where I hoped America would lose. I might have thought that the involvement was not correct, but the idea that it would be better for America to lose is anti-American.
Period.
Ryan Grim, a favorite on the horseshoe Right — the grievance party which has decided that isolationism is the way — comes from Drop Site News, which is a left-wing misinformation site. He responded to investor Shaun Maguire, who <a href="https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/2040599408094667233">asked</a>, “How did we get to the point where so many Americans are rooting against America?”
“If this is an honest question, I&#8217;d say Americans are rooting against America because we facilitated a genocide,” Grim <a href="https://x.com/Aakar__Patel/status/2040622155894026514">declared</a>.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2401-sub?elementPosition=1&amp;row=5&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Presumably, this would be Israel&#8217;s action against Hamas, which was not even remotely close to a genocide.
He continued:
<blockquote>&#8230; and followed it with a surprise attack on a girls elementary school followed by attacks on universities, medical centers, more schools, a world famous pharmaceutical research center, a volley ball team, an unfinished bridge we claimed was transporting weapons and then a nuclear power plant &#8230; we are now promising endless attacks on civilian infrastructure.</blockquote>
Every single thing he states is a lie. We have hit those sites because they are dual-use sites, except for the ones that we hit by accident.
If you truly believe that the American military is so evil that we target girls’ schools for the fun of it, that there are no mistakes made, that we just decided to get up one morning and murder a bunch of schoolgirls, get the hell out of the country.
You hate the country, and you hate the military. There&#8217;s no other way to explain what you are saying. There&#8217;s no other way to explain it.
Do you think Pete Hegseth and President Trump are sitting around drawing up a target list, and they say, “You know what? Just for good measure, let&#8217;s kill a bunch of Iranian schoolgirls”?
Is that what you think? If you think that you despise America.
You can oppose the war. You can oppose the way that the war is being fought. You can have problems with the overall strategy. You can have honest questions about the war.
But that&#8217;s not what we&#8217;re talking about here.
We&#8217;re talking about people openly hoping that America loses because they do not like America, because they think a more powerful America in the world is a bad thing. 
And Iran is counting on these people to undermine support.
This is nothing new. This happened throughout American history. If you go back to the Vietnam War, the Vietcong were counting on university students to claim we were the real bad guys, not the communists who were murdering hundreds of thousands of people. That&#8217;s why you had the students chanting in solidarity with Ho Chi Minh.
We have the same sorts of people now: a large swath of the Left and a significant part of the online Horseshoe Right.
Tucker Carlson put out a tape over the weekend celebrating the end of the American-led world order. He said a bunch of untrue things, which is what he does for a living now, while selling nicotine made in India. He said:
<blockquote>What&#8217;s happening in Iran is the end of American empire as we understand it. And that&#8217;s sad. Boo-hoo. Empire&#8217;s dying, but it&#8217;s not the end of the United States. It&#8217;s not the end of our influence on other nations, hopefully positive influence. It&#8217;s not the end of our economy. It&#8217;s the beginning of a very rough time in our economy, of course, but it&#8217;s hardly the end of it. What we&#8217;ve been doing, for likely your lifetime, if you&#8217;re under 80, is, well, it&#8217;s not working anymore. It hasn&#8217;t actually helped the United States long-term.
Your grandkids at this point don&#8217;t have the promise of a better life than you had. So it&#8217;s not actually a successful experiment. And now it&#8217;s ending because we&#8217;ve reached the limits of our demonstrated power. We can&#8217;t open the Straits of Hormuz. The president of the United States said that last night. Someone else do it. So we&#8217;re done. That&#8217;s okay. It was always going to end. Hopefully you can get out without a nuclear exchange, but now it is ending.</blockquote>
“It was okay. It&#8217;s okay if that happens. And it would probably be good if that happens because you&#8217;ve been lied to for generations.”
He is a liar. He&#8217;s a liar on economics, on military power, all of it. He&#8217;s gotten all of it dead wrong.
Remember this schmuck was telling you last year we were going to be in World War III if the United States struck a nuclear facility with one B-2. Has he been right on a single thing all along the way here? What has he been right on?
Also, why not just say what you really mean? He went even further. 
He called President Trump a <a href="https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2040946336657236274">war criminal</a> over the weekend: 
<blockquote>Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, shows up at the White House yesterday to pray over the president so he will have wisdom and restraint? No. To endorse the murder of civilians, which is a war crime. But more important, it&#8217;s a moral crime. You can&#8217;t kill people who have committed no crime, who did nothing wrong. You can&#8217;t murder the innocent.</blockquote>
We should point out that Tucker Carlson is perfectly fine with Vladimir Putin killing people who have committed no crime. He literally said so. He said, “That&#8217;s what leaders do.” Tucker Carlson has been super pro-Russia throughout the entire Russia-Ukraine conflict as Russia targets civilians. He has been extraordinarily pro-Iran throughout this entire conflict, after Iran murdered tens of thousands of people in the streets and has facilitated the murder of civilians all over the Middle East.
As to his generalized argument, which is that somehow the last 80 years of history have been a giant failure for America, do you know how ignorant of American history you have to be to actually argue that? Destroying the Soviet Union, building the single most powerful economy in the history of planet Earth, is somehow a giant loss?
That is a lie. The statistics prove it&#8217;s a lie. A new story from the Wall Street Journal states, “America&#8217;s middle class is becoming wealthier as more families scaled the economic ladder into higher earning groups. New research shows the ranks of the affluent have grown markedly over the last 50 years or so.”
This would be the period that Tucker says was terrible.
Meanwhile, former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn&#8217;t have two neurons connecting in her brain, put out this <a href="https://x.com/FmrRepMTG/status/2040789438494585175">statement</a> on Easter morning:
<blockquote>Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness.</blockquote>
Listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene lecture everyone else on morality is a hell of a thing, knowing her personal history.
She continued, “I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit. I’m not defending Iran but let’s be honest about all of this. The Strait is closed because the US and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they’ve been telling for decades, that any moment Iran would develop a nuclear weapon. You know who has nuclear weapons? Israel.”
Yes, Israel does have nuclear weapons. Do any of our allies feel threatened by Israeli nuclear weapons? If so, I would love to hear how.
These are the people that Iran is counting on to help out.
Candace Owens put out her usual mirage of insanity. She <a href="https://x.com/RealCandaceO/status/2040918596239446051">tweeted</a>, “This is a satanic administration. We all realize that satanic Zionists occupy the White House, and Congress needs to move to have the Mad King Trump removed. All of our lives may depend upon other countries realizing Trump is deeply unwell and surrounded by religious fanatics who have convinced him that he is a messiah.”
What in the world is she even talking about?
Tim Miller of the anti-Trump group The Bulwark echoed her, writing, “The Satanic Zionist Clause undermines an otherwise compelling critique of Trump.”
Selling your soul for a salary at The Bulwark is a hell of a thing to do.
Pod Save America&#8217;s Jon Favreau endorsed the Candace tweet with a retweet.
Here&#8217;s the thing. The president is not listening to them, and he shouldn&#8217;t listen to them. Why would you listen to people who believe that it is a good thing for America to be weaker in the world? Why would you listen to people who believe that the president of the United States is deliberately targeting civilian schoolgirls?
The answer is you shouldn&#8217;t. The answer is you wouldn&#8217;t.
That’s because those people don&#8217;t like America very much. They will say, “I like a different form of America, an America in my head.”
Thankfully, that America doesn&#8217;t exist. The America that does exist is the America that you live in right now. The one where President Trump is the president. The one that ensures the freedom of the seas and the free flow of commerce, the America that fights off terror nations, the America that protects our allies, the America that does not wish to see the world&#8217;s worst people with the world&#8217;s worst weapons.
That&#8217;s the America you live in right now. Do you like that America, or do you hate that America?
When Joe Biden was president, I still loved America because America is awesome. I didn&#8217;t like Joe Biden as president very much, but I still loved America.
I wasn&#8217;t rooting against America.
Real Americans don’t.

Tucker Taylor Owens

The Haters Who Want America To Lose

Candace Owens

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Vietnam

An American journalist was kidnapped off the streets of Baghdad, Iraq, by armed men in an abduction likely carried out by an Iranian-backed militia — and Iraqi security forces scrambled in their unsuccessful attempt to intercept the kidnappers.
A group of armed men stopped Shelly Kittleson&#8217;s car in the middle of the street, pulled her out, and quickly fled the scene with her in tow. Iraqi security forces immediately pursued, but were unable to stop the kidnappers,
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
CCTV video shows the moment American journalist <a href="https://twitter.com/shellykittleson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@shellykittleson</a> was taken in Baghdad. <a href="https://t.co/JqJcdW7TOb">pic.twitter.com/JqJcdW7TOb</a>
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) <a href="https://twitter.com/TreyYingst/status/2039047721001095275?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
CNN National Security Analyst and former Pentagon official Alex Plitsas <a href="https://x.com/alexplitsas/status/2039036851046990259">stated</a> via X that Kittleson was likely taken hostage by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Kittleson, a journalist specializing in the Middle East who has reported for the BBC, Foreign Relations, and POLITICO, was in Baghdad reporting on Iraqi politics for the outlet Al-Monitor at the time of her kidnapping.
The Iraqi Ministry of Interior said in a statement that efforts are underway to track down the perpetrators and rescue Kittleson.
&#8220;Security forces immediately launched an operation to apprehend the perpetrators, acting on precise intelligence and through intensive field operations, tracking the kidnappers’ movements,&#8221; a translated statement from the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior <a href="https://moi.gov.iq/?article=20535">reads</a>. &#8220;The pursuit resulted in the interception of a vehicle belonging to the kidnappers, which overturned as they attempted to escape. Security forces were able to arrest one of the suspects and seize one of the vehicles used in the crime.&#8221;
Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson said in a <a href="https://x.com/ASDylanJohnson/status/2039068022451613858">statement</a> on X that the State Department was &#8220;aware of the reported kidnapping&#8221; and that Kittleson had been warned of the dangers of continuing to work in Iraq.
&#8220;The State Department previously fulfilled our duty to warn this individual of threats against them and we will continue to coordinate with the FBI to ensure their release as quickly as possible,&#8221; the statement reads. &#8220;An individual with ties to the Iranian-aligned militia group Kataib Hezbollah believed to be involved in the kidnapping has been taken into custody by Iraqi authorities.&#8221;
&#8220;Iraq remains at a Level 4 Travel Advisory and Americans are advised not to travel to Iraq for any reason and to leave Iraq now. The State Department strongly advise all Americans, including members of the press, to adhere to all travel advisories,&#8221; the statement concludes.

Baghdad

WATCH: Video Shows Moment American Female Journalist Is Kidnapped In Iraq

It is said that the first casualty of war is truth. Perhaps so. But consider the compensating benefit: the humor to be found in the frantic, self-infatuated verbiage that gushes in to coddle the lies and float the narrative.
The propaganda press has been working overtime since February 28, when Donald Trump determined to end the war that Iran started in 1979.
Many connoisseurs of political pathology have commented on the presence of aggravated Trump Derangement Syndrome in the coverage of the war. There is certainly no shortage of TDS in the fabrications that the media have been passing out about the war. But behind the unbridled hatred of Trump is the more abiding hatred of American and Israeli military prowess.
Where to start?
A few days ago, <a href="https://x.com/ishapiro/status/2037167715635404844?s=20">a protest in Philadelphia</a> featured the applause line “For every US soldier who comes back in a casket, we cheer!” Then there are the many “expert” reports claiming that, appearances notwithstanding, America is actually losing the war. We have taken out Iran’s entire leadership, sunk nearly all of its navy, obliterated its air force, crushed its air defenses, exploded more than 90% of its stockpiles of missiles and drones, and leveled most of its war-making infrastructure.
Is The Economist magazine owned by Iran or some other opponent of America? I ask because its surreal, reality-free writing about the war has descended from the tendentious to the preposterous. Just a few days ago, they ran a cover story under the title “<a href="https://x.com/TheEconomist/status/2037126183649689877?s=20">Advantage Iran</a>.” “A month of bombing Iran has achieved nothing,” that once-sober publication whimpered. “Will Donald Trump escalate, or talk? For now, at least, the advantage lies with the Islamic Republic.” Really? Tell that to <a href="https://x.com/davidharsanyi/status/2034973352331268380?s=20">these chaps</a>. Or maybe tell <a href="https://x.com/EYakoby/status/2036987387616628859?s=20">Alireza Tangsiri</a>, head — rather, the late head — of Iran’s Navy. He was checked out just a couple of days ago.
If it were not that unbridled displays of insanity are inherently disturbing, such anti-Trump rhapsodies would be merely amusing. As it is, the element of pathetic mendacity renders them more contemptible than amusing. Consider “<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/20/us-trump-victory-iran-war-dangers/">Why U.S. Victory in Iran Would Be Bad for Washington—and the World</a>,” a recent column in Foreign Policy by Howard French, a professor at Columbia University. It is not often that one encounters such a confection of blinkered, ideologically driven nonsense. French begins by telling his readers that the political situation in the United States is not “normal.” He does not directly name the source of the putative abnormality, but it soon emerges that the primary cause of our discontents is — yes, you guessed it — Donald Trump. Things are so far out of whack, French says, that both the American public and world opinion “should simply not wish for a U.S. victory in the country’s 3-week-old war against Iran.”
Why is that? Why would you not wish America to win a war against the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, a misogynistic totalitarian death cult that for forty-seven years, ever since the installation of Khomeini’s lunatic Shia regime, has murdered hundreds if not thousands of Americans while avidly pursuing nuclear weapons and the extinction of Israel?
Instead of offering an argument, French offers a series of sentiments. We should not want victory in Iran because the United States and Israel are engaged in a “senseless war.” What makes it “senseless”? French says that “U.S. President Donald Trump himself has never given a remotely coherent vision of what a victory in Iran would consist of.” But from the very beginning, <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116147082884192486">President Trump said</a> that his aims in the war were to deny Iran the capacity to acquire nuclear weapons, to make it impossible for them to harry their neighbors with drones and ballistic missiles, to dismantle their network of support for terror exporting proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, and finally to make it possible for the Iranian people to rise up and take back their country from the Mullahs. Those very specific goals define the “sense” of the war.
President Trump and his lieutenants have <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2035102800074432620?s=20">iterated those desiderata</a> early and often. French faults President Trump for failing to have “sought authorization from Congress, as the U.S. Constitution calls for him to do.” Let me introduce Howard French to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution">War Powers Resolution </a>of 1973, which explicitly authorizes the president to deploy the military for 60 days without congressional approval.
But all this persiflage about process was really just what Kierkegaard called a “preliminary expectoration.” What really bothers Howard French are two things — or rather, two people: Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. “The far bigger problem that underpins all of these realities,” French says, “is that the United States is governed by a malignant narcissist whose megalomaniacal tendencies have bloomed alarmingly before the world’s eyes during his second term in office.” Oh dear. The TDS is far advanced in this one. So is the NDS. Israel, he says, “has become addicted to permanent war as a substitute for politics and reason in its own region, and thereby empowering and emboldening another malignant politician, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Neither Trump nor Netanyahu is popular in the corridors of Columbia University or the pages of the propaganda press. Ask the Iranian people, though, or Americans uncorrupted by the clarity- and testosterone-sapping virus of elite opinion. French warns about “a future in which Washington has lost most of its other alliances” because of this war. But in fact new allies all over the Middle East are flocking to Washington’s banner. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are among the nations who have <a href="https://x.com/_GlobeObserver/status/2037156692966642016?s=20">refused to consider a ceasefire</a> until the Iranian regime is gone, and both are putting boots where their mouths are, so to speak, promising to send nearly <a href="https://x.com/mitchellvii/status/2037147014383689735?s=20">300,000</a> troops to join battle.
The single worst president in dealing with Iran was Barack Obama, who sent them billions in cash as a bribe but merely accelerated their nuclear program and enabled them to fund their terrorist proxies more lavishly. It should come as no surprise, then, that Howard French holds up Obama as the man whose policies could lead the way forward to “dialogue and mutual reassurances.” What a fool.
Howard French’s embarrassing column proceeds with, “An expert’s point of view on a current event.” His subhead tells us that “the possibility of Trump imposing his personal whims on another nation is even more frightening than U.S. failure.” Some wit on X had the perfect response. It, too, features the rubric, “An expert’s point of view on a current event.” But his subhead gives the game away: “<a href="https://x.com/JTAlexander_/status/2036829710987190705?s=20">Why SPQR Victory in Gaul Would Be Bad for Rome </a>—and the World. The possibility of Caesar imposing his personal whims on another nation is even more frightening than Roman failure.” Touché.
* * *
Roger Kimball is Editor and Publisher of The New Criterion and President and Publisher of <a href="http://www.encounterbooks.com/">Encounter Books</a>.

US-POLITICS-BRIEFING-LEAVITT

The Propaganda Press Cannot Stomach Victory And Its Mendacity Shows

Legacy Media

Trump Derangement Syndrome

U.S. And Israel Wage War Against Iran

Iran Is Using Its Citizens As Human Shields

Islamic Republic

On Tuesday, President Trump announced that America has achieved a form of regime change in Iran. 
To a certain extent, that is correct. President Trump has already announced that the war has effectively been won. From an American perspective, he&#8217;s right; the war has been won —on the military level. Iran has done minimal damage by any sort of standard to American forces and interests.
Meanwhile, Iran itself has been pummeled to dust. The ballistic missile program has basically been destroyed. Their nuclear facilities have been pounded again. Their drone program has been blown up. The only thing Iran can do at this point is harass people.
They can harass their neighbors with occasional missile and drone strikes. They can disrupt some shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
We&#8217;re not done yet, as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has made clear, saying:
<blockquote>And that&#8217;s why we see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well. We negotiate with bombs. You have a choice. As we loiter over the top of Tehran, as the president talked about, about your future, the president has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon. The War Department agrees. Our job is to ensure that. 
And so we&#8217;re keeping our hand on that throttle as long as it&#8217;s hard as is necessary to ensure the interests of the United States of America are achieved on that battlefield. This is not Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not a president who&#8217;s interested in vague end states. He&#8217;s been very clear with us about what we need to accomplish, creating the conditions for them never to have a nuclear capability. And that&#8217;s exactly what we&#8217;re doing in historic fashion.</blockquote>
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What would victory look like for the United States? There are two types of victory here: political victory and actual victory.
We may already have an actual victory. Let&#8217;s say that Iran ends up falling in the next couple of years; that victory will belong to President Trump, because we will have weakened all of the foundations upon which the Iranian regime stands, in the same way that the fall of the Soviet Union belonged to President Reagan.
It won&#8217;t be a political victory because you need an exclamation point for a political victory, some way to say we didn&#8217;t just win; Iran also lost.
Where is Iran right now? Did they totally lose? On the one hand, we can make the argument that simply to survive would be the regime winning, that survival amounts to not losing. 
 
Israel and America&#8217;s other regional allies would have to continue to exercise overwatch of the regime to ensure they don&#8217;t renew their missile, drone, and nuclear programs.
But we do have to ask: Is not losing really a victory for Iran? It might be for the moment, but not for long, because Iran would remain isolated, throttled, and devoid of basic resources. Remember, before this war, there were already millions of people in the streets protesting the regime; the rial was running at 0.00001 to a dollar, and they had so little water that they were moving millions of people out of Tehran. They were actually evacuating their own capital.
Can this regime continue to limp along on that basis for many more years?
The question becomes whether or not President Trump can force the Iranians into a deal that achieves political victory, a good end state that he can go home and brag about. Despite members of the media and Democratic politicians saying they don&#8217;t actually believe that President Trump has been talking to Iran, it has now been confirmed that there are negotiations between the two countries indirectly.
What kind of concessions are they actually making? The devil remains in the details. President Trump said yesterday that Iran has agreed we will never have a nuclear weapon. But if they had to retain a nuclear program that could easily be turned toward weapons development, that&#8217;s not good enough. Will they retain enriched uranium? We&#8217;ll have to find out. President Trump has made clear that, in his view, they must never have a nuclear weapon.
President Trump has apparently released a list of demands: All existing nuclear capabilities will be dismantled — which I assume means all of their nuclear plans — a commitment that Iran will never strive to obtain nuclear weapons, which would have to be enforceable; no material will ever be enriched on Iranian soil; all enriched material would be handed it over to the IAEA in a short-term timetable to be defined between the parties; Natanz and Fordo would be decommissioned and also destroyed. The IAEA would have full access to all information within Iran&#8217;s borders. Iran would completely abandon its terror proxy network. Iran would stop financing and arming proxies in the region. The Strait of Hormuz would remain open, would be a free maritime zone; no one would block it.
As for the missile program, according to the talking points put out by the administration, there would be a decision at a later period, but they would have to limit the quantity and the range, and future use of missiles would have to be for self-defense purposes only.
In return for all of that, theoretically, Iran would have sanctions lifted and receive assistance in developing a civilian nuclear program in Bushehr. Basically, we would build them low-level nuclear programs for energy, and the threat of snapback sanctions would be removed.
I have a question: Does it sound like Iran is ready to do any of that? I have some very, very serious doubts.
At the same time, President Trump does not want to leave the rest of the region subject to the whims of the mullahs. President Trump&#8217;s strongest support for continued action, at this point, is coming from the Saudis, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/us/politics/saudi-prince-iran-trump.html">The New York Times</a>:
<blockquote>In recent days, Mr. Trump has given more serious consideration to a military operation to seize Kharg Island, the hub of Iran&#8217;s oil infrastructure. Such an operation with airborne armed forces or an amphibious assault by Marines would be immensely dangerous. But Prince Mohammed has advocated ground operations in his conversations with Mr. Trump, according to people briefed by American officials.</blockquote>
I actually agree with Mohammed bin Salman&#8217;s assessment here. If America were to grab control of Kharg Island, the actual capacity of Iran to survive — even midterm — drops dramatically.
What comes next? The answer, as it has always been, is in the hands of the Iranian government. Remember, Iran could have, at any time for 50 years, reintegrated into the world economy by ending its global ambitions, its support for terrorism, and its nuclear program. They have not done that.
Maybe they&#8217;re willing to moderate now. I doubt it, but there are still plenty of levers left for the United States to pull. President Trump has already shown a high willingness to do just that.
The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-us-israel-news-updates-2026?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqfGcgDfKBEWhIxvwC5oIzLdgAB61kcrWruScWSEPgDmDl58AWAUM0ls&amp;gaa_sig=ussC2AZQMvBhhzrltb90YvkjDqf3AIQnMr5GiMux8VVsd05MyjHAdj-cQm7pMbigC61x2AT6u1daMqiTYdUcww%3D%3D&amp;gaa_ts=69c42828&amp;utm_source=chatgpt.com">reported</a> yesterday:
<blockquote>The Pentagon is planning to deploy about 3000 soldiers from the Army&#8217;s elite 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East to support operations against Iran, according to two U.S. officials, with a written order expected in the coming hours. Officials cautioned that a decision for boots on the ground in Iran has not been made, but deploying the 82nd opens the door to President Trump for several strategic options.</blockquote>
Special operations, limited in duration; this is not the kind of “quagmire boots on the ground” stuff people were talking about. We&#8217;re not talking about 100,000 troops occupying Iran indefinitely. At most, we are talking about a ground operation to take away territory used to target the Strait of Hormuz, to take away the island.
That&#8217;s probably what we are talking about here.

US-POLITICS-SECURITY-TRUMP-MULLIN

What Does Victory Over Iran Look Like?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Saudi Arabia

Trump Administration

The Pentagon has tapped the Army&#8217;s famed 82nd Airborne Division to deploy 3,000 troops to the Middle East as the United States and Israel continue Operation Epic Fury, the joint military campaign against the Iranian regime.
Fox News Chief National Security correspondent Jennifer Griffin <a href="https://x.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/2036471036477116783">reported</a> on Tuesday that the move is a &#8220;first step&#8221; that would open the door for the Trump administration to shift toward ground operations in Iran, should that prove necessary. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/us/politics/us-airborne-troops-iran.html">first reported</a> on Monday that the Pentagon was considering sending a brigade combat team to support the ongoing operations.
&#8220;Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division Maj Gen Brandon Tegtmeier and his &#8216;command element,&#8217; members of his headquarters staff, have been ordered to deploy to the Middle East as the Pentagon and White House weigh whether to send the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East for possible land operations,&#8221; Griffin said, adding that speculation abounds as to whether the United States could use American operatives to take control of Kharg Island.
U.S. officials told <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-us-israel-news-updates-2026?mod=WSJ_home_mediumtopper_pos_1">The Wall Street Journal</a> that such a deployment would not indicate a definite decision to put &#8220;boots on the ground&#8221; in Iran, but would provide additional leverage for American military assets, should they need to take control of strategically-located islands or use force to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The news comes amid competing narratives between President Trump — who said on Monday that talks with some Iranian officials had been &#8220;productive&#8221; — and officials within the Iranian regime, who say that no such talks have taken place.
The 82nd Airborne Division has long been the Army&#8217;s elite rapid-response team, specializing in airborne-assault operations and able to deploy anywhere in the world within 24 hours or less. Created in 1917 and designated as Airborne in 1942, the 82nd is known as the &#8220;All-American Division&#8221; and executed the first parachute jumps behind enemy lines in Italy in 1943. Within two years, they had parachuted into Normandy on D-Day and played a key role in halting the German offensive during the Battle of the Bulge.

Members of the 82nd Airborne Division land

Trump Sends Best Of The Best Against Iran, With A More Hands-On Phase Now In Play

Pentagon Preps 3,000 Troops From Elite 82nd Airborne For Middle East Deployment

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