The headline says it all. It is a direct quote from President Donald Trump. He is speaking directly, clearly, forcefully about the choice that lies before Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “supreme leader” of Iran: Dismantle the nuclear program or “there will be bombing.”
On Monday, the president briefed reporters on the first direct talks between his special envoy on the Middle East, Steven Witkoff, and Iran’s foreign minister and others in the Iranian delegation to the Oman talks about the Islamic Republic regime’s rush to get nuclear weapons as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles: “They might be tapping us along,” the developer-turned-television star-turned president remarked.
I bring up Trump’s past private business life because few spaces in the business world have as much room for fast-talking, delay-producing fog than land development and television. Trump knows a sham when he is trying to be sold one. His patience for the nonsense peddled by the mullahs for a half century is very low.
Trump does not want either Israel or the United States to have to bomb the sites that house Iran’s nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile production facilities. A week of intensive bombing isn’t a war, but it’s the sort of conflict Trump would rather not have to authorize or supervise. He’d much rather be a man of peace.
But he also knows what a nuclear Iran means, and the least worst thing it means is nuclear blackmail on a scale we have never seen. Worst case, of course, is that the fanatics who run Iran actually use the weapons. Opinions are mixed on whether Khamenei would ever do that, but he is a religious fanatic responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands and two direct attacks on Israel as well as the crazed killing by his proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and militias in Iraq and Syria. Trump can imagine what happens if Iran “breaks out” and goes nuclear. And Trump has said he won’t allow it. I believe him.
How long does he give Iran to begin and conclude dismantling of their centrifuges and everything else connected with their program? Trump has not shown that card yet because he hasn’t had to. Iran hasn’t shown any willingness to take the obvious first step so there’s no need for a timetable.
The obvious first step would be access everywhere in Iran for the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. There are at least a dozen sites that would have to be immediately opened to the IAEA if Iran wants to avoid bombs falling. If Iran refuses the inspections —anywhere, anytime, and for as long as the inspectors want inspections— the negotiations should be over. Witkoff, like Trump, is a very successful real estate developer. Like Trump he knows when he’s being played. Would Trump have let fly with the “tapping us” comment if Witkoff brought back an optimistic report? Doubtful.
On the same day as his “tapping” assessment, the president and Vice President JD Vance welcome THE Ohio State University’s national championship football team to the White House. The Vice President, a proud graduate of OSU, made sure everyone got the pronunciation right, and head coach Ryan Day made a great three-minute talk that summarized the remarkable, unprecedented comeback of the Buckeyes this year to win the national championship. Then Day and the captains of the team — Emeka Egbuka, Jack Sawyer, and Cody Smith — gave Trump his own Buckeye jersey with the number 47. That jersey should be framed and hung in the Oval among the portraits of the presidents so Trump can point it out to visitors and say: “Greatest comeback story in the history of college football, just like mine is in American political history.”
TRUMP SAYS IRAN TALKS ARE ‘EASY’ BUT TAKING TOO LONG AS RUSSIA ADVISES TEHRAN
His is the greatest comeback in American political history, and Trump did not make that remarkable comeback to break bold promises made and repeated in large letters only to see the ayatollahs lurch over the finish line and obtain nukes. I don’t think he came back to enjoy the perks of office but to accomplish things on the order of what he did in his first term: Save the Supreme Court from a hard left turn, succeed with Operation Warp Speed after Covid hit, and an enormous economic boom that followed the first Trump tax cuts.
Leaving Iran to finish its malign design would tarnish his remarkable run and his own unprecedented comeback. Khamenei ought to listen to Trump and not Trump’s domestic critics with their end-stage Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump means what he says. Ayatollah Khamenei: Open the doors to the caves and the factories, destroy the centrifuges and turn over the uranium. Or “there will be bombing.”
Hugh Hewitt is a longtime conservative commentator and author. He is the host of the Hugh Hewitt Show on Salem Radio, which airs every weekday from 3-6 p.m.