The United States’s ceasefire with the Islamic Republic of Iran is set to expire. If Tehran doesn’t agree to Washington’s demands, the Trump administration should renew strikes and target dual-use infrastructure and regime leaders.
The Islamic Republic has had many chances to forego its sponsorship of terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons. It doesn’t deserve another.
The U.S.-Israeli joint military operation, launched on Feb. 28, is aimed at ending Iran’s ability to project power beyond its borders. This goal has been achieved with stunning success. Iran’s navy lies at the bottom of the sea, its air defenses are mostly gone, its leaders are dead, and its defense industrial base and drone and missile capabilities are all but destroyed.
But what Iran lacks in men and munitions it makes up for with hubris. It has long played the West for a fool. Since it seized power in 1979, its ruling theocrats have used violence, hostage-taking, and plain lies to further their goals.
Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the regime’s nuclear weapons program. Iran consistently denied that such a program existed, not that its intentions were really concealed behind that flimsy pretense. It calls routinely for “death to America” and “death to Israel.” In 2017, it unveiled a “Doomsday Clock” to count down the time until Israel’s destruction as predicted by supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
U.S. and Israeli strikes in Operation Midnight Hammer destroyed the clock last summer. But smashing the clock has not changed the ayatollahs’ intentions. Washington and Jerusalem have for decades failed to deflect them from their nihilistic agenda. President George W. Bush threatened military force. President Barack Obama tried appeasement and cash. President Joe Biden buried his head in the sand and ignored Iran’s growing belligerence. As President Donald Trump said in June 2025, Iran “rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.”
Trump himself has given Iran plenty of chances, revealing his preference for a deal over war. But Iran broke the terms of the latest ceasefire by firing at ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Efforts to negotiate, spearheaded by Vice President JD Vance, collapsed after 21 hours due to Iranian intransigence.
Before the ceasefire, Trump warned Iran that he would take out bridges, power plants, and infrastructure that had military uses. If Iran continues its intransigence beyond the two-week ceasefire deadline, Trump should make good on his threat and start hitting Iranian infrastructure.
Some commentators have decry this possibility. CNN’s Jake Tapper suggested it would be a “war crime.” But this is ahistorical nonsense.
UNIVERSITIES CANNOT SURVIVE AS LEFT-WING ECHO CHAMBERS
During World War II, the Allied Powers targeted factories, bridges, and power plants from the Ruhr Valley to Tokyo. As Brian Cox, an expert on international law, noted, Article 52 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions allows the targeting of objects which “by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action” and whose destruction offers a “military advantage.”
The U.S. has all the leverage. The Trump administration should use it to devastating effect.