Middle East

Pete Hegseth's assessment that Iran's chaotic retaliation drove its own partners toward Washington is accurate, not spin. Tehran handed the United States a strategic windfall through operational failure and regional miscalculation.

CENTCOM issued a direct warning to Iranian civilians in 2026, documenting that the IRGC was launching missiles from densely populated residential areas. Tehran's use of human shields violates the Fourth Geneva Convention and represents deliberate escalation doctrine.

Iran fired over 1,400 missiles and drones at neighboring states in the first quarter of 2026, methodically depleting allied interceptor stockpiles at a cost ratio that favors Tehran. Washington has answered with intercepts and briefings. Not with consequences.

Israel wants regime change in Tehran. Trump wants a deal. The gap between those two positions is where American strategy either holds together or falls apart.

The 'America is launching a crusade' narrative requires America to be something it demonstrably isn't. A nation that can't fill its churches isn't launching holy wars.

The moral case for military action against Iran's nuclear program isn't just strategic, it's humanitarian. Delay has a body count too.

Israel hit Tehran. Trump held back on the power plants. Every pundit is calling it a crack in the alliance, they're reading it exactly backwards.

The ceasefire fantasy is collapsing in real time. Iran has never wanted peace, it wants survival on its own terms. That's not negotiable.

Netanyahu said Israel acted alone against Iran's gas compound. What that means for American deterrence strategy cannot be overstated.

Critics who blame American intervention in Iran for today's crisis have the causation exactly backwards, and the prescription they're selling would make everything worse.

Trump says he's not ready to declare victory on Iran. Good. The graveyard of American foreign policy is littered with premature end zones.

A regime firing missiles indiscriminately at its neighbors while its naval bases burn is not projecting power. It's spending the last of its strategic capital.

Declaring victory is step one. The harder work is ensuring the conditions that make Iranian resurgence impossible, and that requires political will that outlasts the news cycle.

Operation Epic Fury is ten days old. The battlefield picture is contested. But the strategic picture is becoming clearer, and it favors the United States.

Surgical strikes and diplomatic off-ramps have failed for forty years. The only path to regional stability runs through Tehran's government collapsing.

Americans were stranded in a war zone while the federal apparatus ran its paperwork. That's not a crisis, it's a Tuesday.

When a president announces a military strike date in advance, it's not a threat. It's a message. The question is who's receiving it.

Twenty years of European-led diplomacy got us a nuclear Iran on the doorstep of the bomb. Trump's willingness to put military options on the table isn't recklessness, it's the first honest policy in a generation.

The U.S.-Israeli pressure campaign against Iran is drawing in regional actors and alarming foreign policy moderates. The moderates are wrong about why.

While critics demand endless diplomatic theater, Trump's pressure campaign against Iran has achieved more in months than a decade of nuclear deals failed to produce.

Tehran keeps launching. Neighbors keep intercepting. Washington keeps deliberating. At some point, the math on deterrence stops working in our favor.

Trump is right that Iran's military has been shattered. But history warns us that broken regimes don't stay broken unless someone keeps the pressure on.