"He also shuts off the pipeline of cash that was being used to bribe politicians and journalists in Europe (the Iranians have basically admitted that they do that) and support various NGOs and the like that serve anti-American and anti-Israeli ends."
Had Trump become President in 2020, his second term would have been better than Biden's presidency, which was a disaster on every level. But I think in the future, when people look back on Trump's second term, the consensus of analysis will be that the four years off was probably the best thing that could have happened. It gave Trump time to strategize and hone his political skills without the responsibility of presidential decision-making. I'm 61 and can say that I've never seen anything remotely close to the first year of Trump's second term. We are living through historic change that is dramatic, powerful, and promising. Pay as much attention as possible - you will want to and need to remember these times.
Outstanding essay. Glenn gets what so many others miss. This is not a war with Iran but a war with militant Islam.
Iran is the ideological center of militant, violent jihad, and it has just been decapitated.
Prior to the capture of Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the country was westernizing, a benign culture that had left jihad behind. Ruled by the mullahs, the military, and the political power of Iran, the spark, the energy, and the resources that led to the metastasizing of militant Islam, jihad, and its spread from the Middle East to infect the West. They were the breeding ground for the growth of jihad.
Only Donald Trump and his team had the wisdom and will to face down the nucleus of the cancer of Islam.
I'm amazed that more people have not seen the bigger picture. This is a major battle in the war of cultures.
There is one thing, though, about which I do not trust Trump: He fails to see--or at least seems to fail to see--the existence and impact of taqiyya and its lies. The Shi'ites of Iran are not the only Muslim enemy; Sunnis are also ultimately dedicated to the imposed submission of all non-Muslim populations under Islam; this means that the Saudis will happily and without hesitation tell every lie they consider necessary to impose Islam on the entire rest of the world--and are, indeed, doing so this very day. I do not know why Trump fails to see this, but he does seem to.
What makes you think he doesnt? Trump is good at keeping his friends close, enemies closer. Enough non-islamic countries get involved with the economic success of Abraham accords, etc and the muslims get dragged into peace by self interest.
If Trump is busy keeping "his friends close, enemies closer," then he is setting his entire playing field up as a totally non-credible display of his own smarmy self-interest--emphases on "non-credible" and "self-interest," there; no one on any side can believe anything he says to anyone at all. Even when he says something that is honest and true, he and his words lack credibility.
Muslim countries have by now been dedicated to Islam's total international control and victory, via whatever means necessary--including lying to presumed allies about their entire plan--for centuries.
Islam isn't compatible with Christian culture. I'm saddened that "Christianity" in Europe has devolved into merely a culture shaped by Christianity. We have a chance to address that part of Islam calling us The Great Satan. Islam was in retreat until the Mullahs gained control of Iran. Let's focus on one enemy at a time.
Mr. Reynolds, you highlight why Trump succeeds in solving problems. IMO, primarily because he actually wants to. Consider the "homeless industrial complex" and their epic failure to "solve" homelessness. What, and put ourselves out of our "phoney baloney (and epically lucrative) job"s? How dare you..er, we. That's one advantage being already hugely wealthy before becoming president has given him. Not to say he isn't against making another nickel. He is beholden to no one, and he's not looking for his "post president" gig. But his actions declare that he actually loves the U.S...and he loves NYC. He knows he needs to succeed in solving domestic and international problems...not "manage the decline" as one of his many handpicked, very competent administration members declared in the face of the European elites a short time ago. He had four years to plan this out and used the time wisely. OBTW, Elon buying Twitter (X) and the Ellison's buying...CNN!? may end up being the greatest long-term victories of this era. As always, we'll see, and "don't get cocky".
In a way, Trump is the first modern president. We will probably not have wars like WWI and WWII anymore but instead live in a state of tension with various ideologies. Iran is the last part of his plan: we have sent China and Russia back home from our hemisphere, and we are reordering a new ME that once countenanced a savage regime like Iran. Our allies there would rather send an astronaut to the Space Station than set off IEDs in Lebanon. This is a new world, and Trump saw it before we all did.
The lord works in mysterious ways. Had Trump not had the 2020 election stolen from him he would now be a distant memory. Instead he stands atop of the world like a colossus.
What a week: (1) the USA Olympic Hockey wins gold over Canada and is greatly celebrated at a SOTU address; (2) Paramount plucks Warner Bros from Netflix after Director Susan Rice shoots her mouth off about revenge and CEO Sarandos refuses to dump her; and, (3) the Iranian tyrant leader is vaporized.
"Part of that is because the foreign policy establishment, like the domestic policy establishment, doesn’t exist to solve problems. It exists to manage those problems in ways that keep its members cushily employed. "
That establishment, like all of D.C.'s many establishments, has expressed utter contempt for Trump, to the point that he has zero motive to listen to them. Ironically, their childish refusal to accept Trump the Boor has enabled him to bypass all their entanglements and objections.
Trump is a 1980s American, preserving the ethos from when most of the nation had sufficient moral clarity to unequivocally name enemies, when we had pride in our role as The Good Guy (in contrast to the USSR), and we saw our military and economic might as a wondrous tool of liberation.
I am not sure it is all as well planned as you make it seem but his willingness to, as you say, cut the Gordian knot on so many of these things is around 75 percent of what is needed to bring about real change and for this I am grateful. I still wish he would learn to speak more softly in addition to carrying the big stick.
I wish I could be as optimistic as you. I'm happy that Khameni and his troupe are gone, and I'd like to believe that it's enough of an object lesson that whoever is in charge just under them won't just step forward, like Al Haig, to announce they they are in charge now. The terrible destruction wrought on the Iranian populace by the regime may also mitigate that risk, as may the choice of an obvious candidate for new leader in Reza Pahlavi.
But as tidy as the regime decapitation was, it worries me that this is how you get somebody who was nobody before, like Napoleon or Lenin. And, contradictorily, it also worries me that we may decide to ensure that doesn't happen by trying to micro-manage Iran's rebuilding as we tried to do Iraq's. I *think* Trump is savvy enough to avoid the latter trap.
And, as you point out, there are a lot of silver linings on this dark cloud, if such it be -- cutting the legs off Hamas would almost be worth losing Iran to a Napoleon.
It is impossible for me to imagine anything worse than the Mullah regime. Really it is. It was that bad. Even a destructive civil war would be better. This is an amazing moment of possible positive change brought about because someone could imagine a world without the Mullahs terrorizing the world just as Reagan almost alone, even among movement conservatives, was able to imagine a world without the USSR. I am no fan of Trump but he deserves great credit here as does Netanyahu. This is his decades old vision coming to fruition.
FWIW, watch the movie "Argo". We rewatched tonight and reminded us of the brutality of the Iranian hostage crisis.
I suspect we don't know anything close to how much evil has been sown by the vicious Iranian leaders--their funding and support for others terrorists in particular.
I've seen Argo. And I am fairly familiar with the crimes of the regime but for our purposes, the biggest crime is the destabilizing of the entire Middle East through support for terror.
I can’t either. But I can imagine several that would be as bad. But I certainly agree it is a moment of possible positive change. Unfortunately that’s not enough to characterize my state of mind as even cautiously optimistic — and I voted for Trump in 20 and 24.
I certainly have learned over the past 24 years to temper my hopes and expectations. But I reiterate that this is a unique case in which ANY change is better than what we have at present.
The opportunities for an improvement are indeed significant.
But there are quite a few possible futures for Iran that would be just as bad as what we had last week, though certainly bad in different ways. Perhaps I am counting as possible some futures you just don't credit as legitimately possible, or perhaps you haven't exercised your imagination enough. Maybe the former is more likely, but, well, the former is the head I'm in.
Yes, always remember the Law of Authoritarian Successor Decline, and that the difference between good and bad is less than that between bad and worse. Also remember the Law of Unintended Consequences:
>> but China needs oil and Russia is broke and mired in an endless and ruinous war of its own devising.…
>> closing the strait of Hormuz now only helps us by driving up the prices of our oil.
Which in turn means that Russia will no longer be broke, which may undo the Ukraine’s recent successes. It was troubling that the only mention of the Russian invasion in the State of the Union was as a segue to Iran.
It’s Day 1, doctor. When you look at the subtlety that the administration is using to quietly usher in a new regime in Venezuela, they obviously did not just come up with the post Maduro raid planning on the fly.
Therefore I would have a great deal of confidence that the administration will also have “gamed out” the following weeks and months in Iran with even more attention than to VZ.
And to our host’s point, the way that all the threads are being pulled together in a game of multi-dimensional chess is a thing of wonder. We can but look, listen and learn.
One can only assume that the Iranian regime got their “intelligence” from the establishment mouthpieces like the NYT and CNN International, who present DJT as a simple minded petulant toddler who “always chickens out.” Hence the continuing obfuscatory “negotiations” as if they were still dealing with the callow Obama and his supine minion Kerry - they thought it would continue to work.
How could they have been so obtuse?
As I said, it’s Day 1. Let’s see how it goes. I am confident you will be reassured and meanwhile, for those of us who are so inclined, we should pray for the long suffering people of Iran.
I’m not prepared to call it a failure yet. ;-) It’s certainly still Day 1. And I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that maintaining the status quo forever is always preferable to kicking over the traces and hoping for the best. As I said to Freedom Lover, I voted for Trump in 20 and 24; I can’t imagine any likely Democrat handling it better, and I have plenty of reason to hope Trump has all the ducks lined up. (I have to say that the chaos of the administration’s last few months makes me worry.) But hope is not even cautious optimism; perhaps by day 20 I will have more grounds.
You're touching on an important distinction that many miss--the difference between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
The mullahcracy is totalitarian--nothing escapes their gimlet eye, and deviation means death or punishment so savage it might make you wish for death.
I suppose it's possible there could be someone worse, but I beg leave to doubt it.
At the same time, I beg leave to doubt that Iran is a hotbed of liberal democracy in waiting. We hear from the urban elites--especially those in the capital--and from the expat community which is largely the old Iranian middle class. The peasantry out in the sticks? Not so much.
And let's not forget that "Iran" is still an empire. Persians are only about 60 percent of the total population: there's substantial, geographically-concentrated ethnic minorities, including Azeris (20 percent), Kurds (10 percent) and Baluchis.
I can't find the exact numbers for the Baluchis--obviously they're small--but (1) they're concentrated geographically in the southwesternmost corner of the country--right next to Pakistan--and (2) they're apparently Sunnis, unlike most of the rest of Iran.
I'll venture to guess some of these guys will make a break for the exits, just as happened in Iraq after we knocked over Saddam.
So a Napoleon is probably a *best-case scenario* for the Iranians.
And--here's the thing--the Iranian Napoleon is going to have his hands full, and will have nothing left over for threatening anyone other than his near-neighbors in the Middle East...who will be conniving to extend their own borders to "protect" their fellow Azeris, Baluchis and so on (the Kurds, alas, are probably on their own).
In that sense it's not very different than the changeover from the USSR to plain old Russia. The USSR was an ideologically-driven, expansionist state that posed a global threat. Putin's Russia, for all its *rodomontade*, barely poses a threat to its physically adjacent neighbors.
I very much expect that to be true of post-mullahcracy Iran as well.
The main difference, of course, being that we won't have to worry about their still having 23,000 nuclear warheads, as Russia does.
Adar is a month when we are told to be joyful and to celebrate Purim... (on 3.3 this year) when the evil Haman's plan to rid Persia of its Jews was foiled and we fought back and won... Purim sameach!
"He also shuts off the pipeline of cash that was being used to bribe politicians and journalists in Europe (the Iranians have basically admitted that they do that) and support various NGOs and the like that serve anti-American and anti-Israeli ends."
Tucker Carlson, CNN hardest hit.
It’s amazing what our military can do when it’s focused on war and not DEI
Had Trump become President in 2020, his second term would have been better than Biden's presidency, which was a disaster on every level. But I think in the future, when people look back on Trump's second term, the consensus of analysis will be that the four years off was probably the best thing that could have happened. It gave Trump time to strategize and hone his political skills without the responsibility of presidential decision-making. I'm 61 and can say that I've never seen anything remotely close to the first year of Trump's second term. We are living through historic change that is dramatic, powerful, and promising. Pay as much attention as possible - you will want to and need to remember these times.
Outstanding essay. Glenn gets what so many others miss. This is not a war with Iran but a war with militant Islam.
Iran is the ideological center of militant, violent jihad, and it has just been decapitated.
Prior to the capture of Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the country was westernizing, a benign culture that had left jihad behind. Ruled by the mullahs, the military, and the political power of Iran, the spark, the energy, and the resources that led to the metastasizing of militant Islam, jihad, and its spread from the Middle East to infect the West. They were the breeding ground for the growth of jihad.
Only Donald Trump and his team had the wisdom and will to face down the nucleus of the cancer of Islam.
I'm amazed that more people have not seen the bigger picture. This is a major battle in the war of cultures.
There is one thing, though, about which I do not trust Trump: He fails to see--or at least seems to fail to see--the existence and impact of taqiyya and its lies. The Shi'ites of Iran are not the only Muslim enemy; Sunnis are also ultimately dedicated to the imposed submission of all non-Muslim populations under Islam; this means that the Saudis will happily and without hesitation tell every lie they consider necessary to impose Islam on the entire rest of the world--and are, indeed, doing so this very day. I do not know why Trump fails to see this, but he does seem to.
What makes you think he doesnt? Trump is good at keeping his friends close, enemies closer. Enough non-islamic countries get involved with the economic success of Abraham accords, etc and the muslims get dragged into peace by self interest.
One step at a time...
If Trump is busy keeping "his friends close, enemies closer," then he is setting his entire playing field up as a totally non-credible display of his own smarmy self-interest--emphases on "non-credible" and "self-interest," there; no one on any side can believe anything he says to anyone at all. Even when he says something that is honest and true, he and his words lack credibility.
Muslim countries have by now been dedicated to Islam's total international control and victory, via whatever means necessary--including lying to presumed allies about their entire plan--for centuries.
Islam isn't compatible with Christian culture. I'm saddened that "Christianity" in Europe has devolved into merely a culture shaped by Christianity. We have a chance to address that part of Islam calling us The Great Satan. Islam was in retreat until the Mullahs gained control of Iran. Let's focus on one enemy at a time.
Mr. Reynolds, you highlight why Trump succeeds in solving problems. IMO, primarily because he actually wants to. Consider the "homeless industrial complex" and their epic failure to "solve" homelessness. What, and put ourselves out of our "phoney baloney (and epically lucrative) job"s? How dare you..er, we. That's one advantage being already hugely wealthy before becoming president has given him. Not to say he isn't against making another nickel. He is beholden to no one, and he's not looking for his "post president" gig. But his actions declare that he actually loves the U.S...and he loves NYC. He knows he needs to succeed in solving domestic and international problems...not "manage the decline" as one of his many handpicked, very competent administration members declared in the face of the European elites a short time ago. He had four years to plan this out and used the time wisely. OBTW, Elon buying Twitter (X) and the Ellison's buying...CNN!? may end up being the greatest long-term victories of this era. As always, we'll see, and "don't get cocky".
Trump has children and grandchildren; doesn't want them to live in fear.
By “homeless industrial complex”, you mean “drug zombie farmers”.
Drug zombie farmers...for fun and profit.
We should release a video game.
You know, Glenn, you really are a very smart guy. You know things. The column is absolutely brilliant, one of the best by you that I've ever read.
Perfesser, your choice of words made me realize something...
You know who also spent years in the political wilderness?
Churchill.
In a way, Trump is the first modern president. We will probably not have wars like WWI and WWII anymore but instead live in a state of tension with various ideologies. Iran is the last part of his plan: we have sent China and Russia back home from our hemisphere, and we are reordering a new ME that once countenanced a savage regime like Iran. Our allies there would rather send an astronaut to the Space Station than set off IEDs in Lebanon. This is a new world, and Trump saw it before we all did.
The lord works in mysterious ways. Had Trump not had the 2020 election stolen from him he would now be a distant memory. Instead he stands atop of the world like a colossus.
Oft evil will shall evil mar.
What a week: (1) the USA Olympic Hockey wins gold over Canada and is greatly celebrated at a SOTU address; (2) Paramount plucks Warner Bros from Netflix after Director Susan Rice shoots her mouth off about revenge and CEO Sarandos refuses to dump her; and, (3) the Iranian tyrant leader is vaporized.
"Part of that is because the foreign policy establishment, like the domestic policy establishment, doesn’t exist to solve problems. It exists to manage those problems in ways that keep its members cushily employed. "
That establishment, like all of D.C.'s many establishments, has expressed utter contempt for Trump, to the point that he has zero motive to listen to them. Ironically, their childish refusal to accept Trump the Boor has enabled him to bypass all their entanglements and objections.
Trump is a 1980s American, preserving the ethos from when most of the nation had sufficient moral clarity to unequivocally name enemies, when we had pride in our role as The Good Guy (in contrast to the USSR), and we saw our military and economic might as a wondrous tool of liberation.
All in all, today was a tough day for terrorism and corruption. May we enjoy many more like it.
I am not sure it is all as well planned as you make it seem but his willingness to, as you say, cut the Gordian knot on so many of these things is around 75 percent of what is needed to bring about real change and for this I am grateful. I still wish he would learn to speak more softly in addition to carrying the big stick.
I wish I could be as optimistic as you. I'm happy that Khameni and his troupe are gone, and I'd like to believe that it's enough of an object lesson that whoever is in charge just under them won't just step forward, like Al Haig, to announce they they are in charge now. The terrible destruction wrought on the Iranian populace by the regime may also mitigate that risk, as may the choice of an obvious candidate for new leader in Reza Pahlavi.
But as tidy as the regime decapitation was, it worries me that this is how you get somebody who was nobody before, like Napoleon or Lenin. And, contradictorily, it also worries me that we may decide to ensure that doesn't happen by trying to micro-manage Iran's rebuilding as we tried to do Iraq's. I *think* Trump is savvy enough to avoid the latter trap.
And, as you point out, there are a lot of silver linings on this dark cloud, if such it be -- cutting the legs off Hamas would almost be worth losing Iran to a Napoleon.
It is impossible for me to imagine anything worse than the Mullah regime. Really it is. It was that bad. Even a destructive civil war would be better. This is an amazing moment of possible positive change brought about because someone could imagine a world without the Mullahs terrorizing the world just as Reagan almost alone, even among movement conservatives, was able to imagine a world without the USSR. I am no fan of Trump but he deserves great credit here as does Netanyahu. This is his decades old vision coming to fruition.
FWIW, watch the movie "Argo". We rewatched tonight and reminded us of the brutality of the Iranian hostage crisis.
I suspect we don't know anything close to how much evil has been sown by the vicious Iranian leaders--their funding and support for others terrorists in particular.
I've seen Argo. And I am fairly familiar with the crimes of the regime but for our purposes, the biggest crime is the destabilizing of the entire Middle East through support for terror.
Agreed.
I can’t either. But I can imagine several that would be as bad. But I certainly agree it is a moment of possible positive change. Unfortunately that’s not enough to characterize my state of mind as even cautiously optimistic — and I voted for Trump in 20 and 24.
Sure there are some that would be just as bad. But not worse. So any removal of the regime that doesn't cause immediate disaster is the smart move.
I certainly have learned over the past 24 years to temper my hopes and expectations. But I reiterate that this is a unique case in which ANY change is better than what we have at present.
I just cannot go quite that far.
The opportunities for an improvement are indeed significant.
But there are quite a few possible futures for Iran that would be just as bad as what we had last week, though certainly bad in different ways. Perhaps I am counting as possible some futures you just don't credit as legitimately possible, or perhaps you haven't exercised your imagination enough. Maybe the former is more likely, but, well, the former is the head I'm in.
Yes, always remember the Law of Authoritarian Successor Decline, and that the difference between good and bad is less than that between bad and worse. Also remember the Law of Unintended Consequences:
>> but China needs oil and Russia is broke and mired in an endless and ruinous war of its own devising.…
>> closing the strait of Hormuz now only helps us by driving up the prices of our oil.
Which in turn means that Russia will no longer be broke, which may undo the Ukraine’s recent successes. It was troubling that the only mention of the Russian invasion in the State of the Union was as a segue to Iran.
It’s Day 1, doctor. When you look at the subtlety that the administration is using to quietly usher in a new regime in Venezuela, they obviously did not just come up with the post Maduro raid planning on the fly.
Therefore I would have a great deal of confidence that the administration will also have “gamed out” the following weeks and months in Iran with even more attention than to VZ.
And to our host’s point, the way that all the threads are being pulled together in a game of multi-dimensional chess is a thing of wonder. We can but look, listen and learn.
One can only assume that the Iranian regime got their “intelligence” from the establishment mouthpieces like the NYT and CNN International, who present DJT as a simple minded petulant toddler who “always chickens out.” Hence the continuing obfuscatory “negotiations” as if they were still dealing with the callow Obama and his supine minion Kerry - they thought it would continue to work.
How could they have been so obtuse?
As I said, it’s Day 1. Let’s see how it goes. I am confident you will be reassured and meanwhile, for those of us who are so inclined, we should pray for the long suffering people of Iran.
I’m not prepared to call it a failure yet. ;-) It’s certainly still Day 1. And I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that maintaining the status quo forever is always preferable to kicking over the traces and hoping for the best. As I said to Freedom Lover, I voted for Trump in 20 and 24; I can’t imagine any likely Democrat handling it better, and I have plenty of reason to hope Trump has all the ducks lined up. (I have to say that the chaos of the administration’s last few months makes me worry.) But hope is not even cautious optimism; perhaps by day 20 I will have more grounds.
You're touching on an important distinction that many miss--the difference between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
The mullahcracy is totalitarian--nothing escapes their gimlet eye, and deviation means death or punishment so savage it might make you wish for death.
I suppose it's possible there could be someone worse, but I beg leave to doubt it.
At the same time, I beg leave to doubt that Iran is a hotbed of liberal democracy in waiting. We hear from the urban elites--especially those in the capital--and from the expat community which is largely the old Iranian middle class. The peasantry out in the sticks? Not so much.
And let's not forget that "Iran" is still an empire. Persians are only about 60 percent of the total population: there's substantial, geographically-concentrated ethnic minorities, including Azeris (20 percent), Kurds (10 percent) and Baluchis.
I can't find the exact numbers for the Baluchis--obviously they're small--but (1) they're concentrated geographically in the southwesternmost corner of the country--right next to Pakistan--and (2) they're apparently Sunnis, unlike most of the rest of Iran.
I'll venture to guess some of these guys will make a break for the exits, just as happened in Iraq after we knocked over Saddam.
So a Napoleon is probably a *best-case scenario* for the Iranians.
And--here's the thing--the Iranian Napoleon is going to have his hands full, and will have nothing left over for threatening anyone other than his near-neighbors in the Middle East...who will be conniving to extend their own borders to "protect" their fellow Azeris, Baluchis and so on (the Kurds, alas, are probably on their own).
In that sense it's not very different than the changeover from the USSR to plain old Russia. The USSR was an ideologically-driven, expansionist state that posed a global threat. Putin's Russia, for all its *rodomontade*, barely poses a threat to its physically adjacent neighbors.
I very much expect that to be true of post-mullahcracy Iran as well.
The main difference, of course, being that we won't have to worry about their still having 23,000 nuclear warheads, as Russia does.
I dislike Trump, but taking down Khamenei and (hopefully) the mullahcracy is a great accomplishment.
Adar is a month when we are told to be joyful and to celebrate Purim... (on 3.3 this year) when the evil Haman's plan to rid Persia of its Jews was foiled and we fought back and won... Purim sameach!