President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities is as “America First” as it gets – especially in the wake of the agreement between Israel and Iran to enter into a ceasefire.
With one decisive blow, Trump acted to prevent a major American adversary from obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapons.
What could be more “America First” than that?
As policymakers assess potential threats, they must be guided by how they assess other nations’ capabilities and intents. A foreign government with destructive capability but no malicious intent doesn’t threaten us or our interests. Similarly, a foreign government with malicious intent but no capability to do significant damage doesn’t significantly threaten us or our interests.
When destructive capability marries malicious intent, however, a significant threat arises.
For almost half a century, going back to its birth in 1979, the revolutionary theocratic regime that runs the Islamic Republic of Iran has been a particularly vicious and violent foe of the United States and its allies. In the decades since, it has murdered hundreds of American government officials, soldiers, and civilians.
Iran’s leaders have made clear what they want: “Death to America,” the “Great Satan.”
Iran’s malicious activities toward the United States represent an ongoing threat. Right now, for instance, there’s one man in federal custody and another on the loose and presumed to be living in Iran, both of whom were indicted by the U.S. government less than a year ago for separate plots to assassinate President Donald Trump.
Murdering Americans, even American presidents, is not enough for the mullahs, though. Decades ago, they launched “Project Amad” to develop their own nuclear weapons. While denying it was pursuing such a capability, the regime nevertheless built facilities to conduct research and enrich uranium to near weapons-grade. And to deliver those nuclear weapons to their intended targets, Iran developed a ballistic missile program regarded by experts as the largest in the Middle East.
For years, Iranian government officials and their allies in the West claimed that Iran had the right to enrich uranium. They insisted they were only conducting the research for peaceful purposes. Documents captured by Israeli intelligence in 2018, though, say Iran’s government was lying all along – “The papers show these guys were working on nuclear bombs,” said a nuclear engineer and former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran’s desire to obtain a nuclear weapon capability was so well-known that Barack Obama negotiated with the Iranian regime over Iran’s nuclear program. The agreement he concluded was so bad that when then-candidate Donald Trump spoke at a rally organized by the group I co-founded, Tea Party Patriots, Trump said: “Never, ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran. And I mean NEVER!”
As president, Trump withdrew the United States from Obama’s terrible nuclear deal and instead imposed “maximum pressure” on the Iranian regime.
Joe Biden overturned Trump’s policy, eased sanctions on Iran, and spent four years trying to create a new deal with Iran. Biden’s policy failed, and Iran made so much progress in pursuit of nuclear weapons that earlier this month, the board of the IAEA declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, after having released a report a week earlier saying Iran had enough uranium enriched to 60% purity – near weapons-grade – to make as many as nine nuclear bombs.
Regarding Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, intent may not yet have married capability, but they’re engaged, and the nuptials are fast approaching.
That is a marriage the United States simply could not afford to allow to happen. It fell to President Trump to take action to prevent it.
Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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