The Iranian regime was shockingly close to achieving immortality before President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury. If Iran were allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, regime change from the outside would have ceased to be an option, and the most powerful bomb known to man would have fallen into the hands of radical jihadists.
The biggest reason why Trump could never do to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un what he did to former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro or the late Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is that “Rocket Man” has nuclear weapons and wants the world to know he’ll use them. Because we allowed North Korea to become a nuclear power, the communist regime is a permanent geopolitical fixture — and one the world has to walk on eggshells around.
If the United States and Israel hadn’t acted when they did, the largest state sponsor of terrorism would have achieved that same immunity status. That is a much scarier prospect than the isolationist “hermit state” getting a nuclear weapon. The Iranian parliament chants “death to America, death to Israel,” and the Islamic Republic has vowed to wipe the Jewish state off the map.
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A nuclear Iran isn’t just a danger to the West, but the entire world. Iran funds and facilitates terrorism around the globe through proxies including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others. Imagine if, after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, Israel couldn’t invade Gaza to target the terrorists responsible. That is what Iranian nuclear deterrence looks like. Worse yet, imagine one of those terrorist groups waging nuclear jihad.
The instability and unpredictability of Iran were exemplified in their response to the U.S.-Israeli strikes, when the Revolutionary Guard launched missiles at Gulf States that had been trying to maintain neutrality in the conflict. The theocratic regime is oppressive to its own citizens, slaughtering tens of thousands of protesters this year alone. But on the world stage, Iran is a malicious and hostile actor that poses an existential threat to Israel and its Western allies.
Jihadists see martyrdom — which, in their view, involves dying in the act of killing non-Muslims and Muslim “hypocrites” — as the ultimate goal and the only way to guarantee entrance into paradise.
Muhammad himself said, as recorded in Sahih al Bukhari 2797, “I would love to be martyred in Allah’s Cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred.” He added, as recorded in Sahih al Bukhari 2817, “Nobody who enters Paradise likes to go back to the world even if he got everything on the earth, except a Mujahid who wishes to return to the world so that he may be martyred ten times.”
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Nuclear weapons create a game of chicken. Who are you most convinced would actually use one? That is who has the upper hand. Jihadists regularly blow themselves up with the hopes of killing a few innocent people. Imagine how much more willingly they would annihilate themselves to die as “martyrs” if it meant mass destruction of infidels.
The famous line on nuclear war from the 1983 film WarGames goes, “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” For a jihadist, mutually assured destruction is no deterrent — it’s an incentive. That’s why preventing Iran from getting a nuke is worth whatever the cost.