The United States and Israeli military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran has entered its third week. President Donald Trump has said that the “war is going great” and that the U.S. is “way ahead of the timetable.” The war is going well. For this reason, among others, the U.S. should keep going.
Trump must hold firm and finish the job in Iran.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has called “Operation Epic Fury” a “war of firsts.” In the war’s opening salvo, the U.S. and Israel carried out the largest decapitation strike in modern military history, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of his top confidants and commanders in a matter of minutes.
The Iranian regime is in chaos, its ability to exercise command and control over its armed forces severely hampered. Iranian air power has taken a beating. With no fewer than 58 ships sunk, the regime’s navy “is largely no more,” as Hegseth put it. For the first time since World War II, a U.S. Navy submarine used a torpedo to sink an enemy submarine. America’s military cooperation with Israel is also unprecedented, both in scope and scale, redefining how allied nations can wage war together on the battlefield.
The U.S. has air superiority in key areas and is diminishing Iran’s potency every day. The tyranny’s infrastructure is being smashed. By every metric, we are winning the war and showcasing formidable military prowess.
China, America’s foremost foe, has been notably silent. It has lodged formulaic protests against the U.S. attacking its chief regional ally and gas station, but its “wolf warrior” diplomats are quiet. One has the impression that Beijing is caught off guard and recalculating.
After four years of free fall under the Biden administration, American deterrence is reviving under Trump. Our enemies again fear us, as they should.
But as President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed, “every war will astonish you.” This one is no different. The enemy, albeit severely damaged and stunned, gets a vote.
The Iranian regime has sought to close the Strait of Hormuz, an essential transit point for oil and other traded goods. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has sought to use the chokepoint to gain a stranglehold on the world economy, driving gas prices up and, it hopes, American willpower down.
Some have speculated that, with gas prices rising, midterm elections only eight months away, and the public adverse to casualties, Trump might declare victory prematurely.
This would be dangerous.
As Trump said on March 11, the U.S. has “won” but has to “finish the job.” Peerless military performance is not enough; objectives must be met.
We and our allies have a crucial interest in preventing the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means for nuclear blackmail. This means the Iranian regime, hell-bent on its nuclear program, murdering Americans, and wiping Israel from the map, must be prevented from being able to achieve those things, either by its own obliteration or by the obliteration of all those possibilities in some other way.
The outlaw nation is willing to shut down shipping and attack its neighbors wantonly. This demonstrates why it must not be left with any semblance of a nuclear program or with ballistic missiles. It must be prevented from projecting power outside of its borders. This means dismantling Tehran’s cyber, air, and naval capabilities. Much of this has been done, but more work remains.
EDITORIAL: THE UNITED STATES MUST CONTROL THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ
The Guard should be destroyed. So must the Basij militia, which has been responsible for the murder of many of the 32,000-plus Iranian civilians slaughtered since January. If the U.S. and Israel can deal with these internal terrorist forces, as seems to be happening now in a second phase of the war with strikes against internal security patrols and roadblocks, they will knock out pillars that support the Islamic Republic. We should do what we can to make it collapse.
Iran can never again be allowed to menace its neighbors or threaten Americans far from its shores. The decision to go to war having been made, the task must be completed. As the famed U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur put it: “In war, there is no substitute for victory.”