In the days since the United States and Israel launched their campaign against Iran, the term “mowing the lawn” has resurfaced in foreign policy discussions. Rather than pursuing a full-scale effort to dismantle Iran’s nuclear and ballistic programs, this concept envisions periodic, targeted strikes — returning every few years to degrade Iran’s military capabilities and then withdrawing.
The appeal of mowing the lawn is that it sounds controlled and low-cost — hit, degrade, leave, repeat. In practice, however, it is a flawed strategy for obvious reasons — especially in the case of Iran.
The regime would quickly adapt to the periodic attacks. It would focus on hardening and dispersing its facilities to blunt the impact of future strikes, ultimately making its capabilities more resilient and harder to monitor. And each round would invite unpredictable retaliation — through proxies, regional escalation, or direct attacks.
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Moreover, such an approach rests on shaky legal ground and would risk normalizing the use of force, eroding international norms, and straining alliances.
Rather than solving the underlying problem with a coherent, legitimate strategy, mowing the lawn is a form of maintenance warfare — akin to kicking the can down the road.
Instead of accepting the persistent threat to global stability that Iran has posed for 47 years, President Donald Trump has chosen to eliminate it.
As Democrats in Congress and their legacy media friends push for a premature end to the war, Gulf State leaders are urging the U.S. and Israel to finish the job. Though they initially opposed the strikes on Iran, Tehran’s attacks on their territory have hardened their stance.
Multiple sources told Reuters this week that Gulf leaders are calling on Washington “not to stop short.” They want to ensure that Iran is “neutralized” and no longer capable of threatening their economies. “Degrading Iran’s power” has become a “long-term priority.”
Abdulaziz Sager, chairman of the Saudi-based Gulf Research Center, said, “There is a wide feeling across the Gulf that Iran has crossed every red line with every Gulf country.”
“If the Americans pull out before the task is complete, we’ll be left to confront Iran on our own,” Sager added.
Despite the full-court press unleashed by the Left, there are signs that Americans support their commander in chief. For example, pro-Israel candidate Donna Miller won decisively over anti-Israel candidate Robert Peters in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Illinois’s 2nd Congressional District. Miller finished with more than 40% of the vote compared to 12% for Peters.
Miller’s big win likely breaks the hearts of Democratic politicians and the vast majority of the legacy media who no longer even try to hide their antisemitic world views, their opposition to the war, or their desire for the Iranian regime to prevail.
Though just one race in one state, its broader message is one that politicians and the media should not ignore. While an extremely loud minority of Americans openly traffics in antisemitic rhetoric, most Americans continue to support Israel, and many back a hard line against Iran. Recent polling underscores this reality, with overwhelming Republican support and even a measurable share of Democrats favoring military action — revealing a public far less aligned with online discourse than recent media coverage would suggest.
This reality was made plain on Tuesday, when the left-wing, anti-American, and anti-Israeli media outlet Al Jazeera published an article arguing that the U.S.-Israeli strategy against Iran is working and that Trump must stay the course. The author, Muhanad Seloom, an assistant professor of international politics and security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, noted that “every aspect of Iran’s ability to project regional power is being successfully degraded.”
Seloom began by summing up the dominant progressive narrative: “The United States and Israel stumbled into a war without a plan. Iran is retaliating across the region. Oil prices are surging, and the world is facing another Middle Eastern quagmire. U.S. senators have called it a blunder. Cable news has tallied the crises. Commentators have warned of a long war.”
Then, he systematically dismantled each claim. “When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power — its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture — the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades.”
Seloom’s clear-eyed assessment of the war is refreshing. Still, it says something when Al Jazeera is delivering more credible coverage than the Western media.
The reality is that the U.S. and Israel are winning this war. Israel’s sustained campaign against both the leadership and rank-and-file of the Basij and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has significantly degraded Iran’s ability to maintain control. Emerging reports of desertions within these forces signal major cracks in the regime’s core.
While lower-tier Guard leadership still retains control over the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. strikes on Kharg Island and key targets along the waterway with 5,000-pound bombs have no doubt gone a long way toward ending its stranglehold on the strait.
The theory of gradual, then sudden, applies here. As long as the U.S. and Israel stay the course, it is only a matter of time before a breaking point is reached and the Guard loses its grip on power.
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It would be a pity if a temporary spike in oil prices were to bring the war to an end before victory is secured.
For every reason, we must finish the job.