Foreign Policy > Iran

Why This War With Iran Was Always Necessary

This war has long been an existential necessity for America’s—and the West’s—survival, but Trump is the first president who has the courage to act.

S. David Sultzer | March 3, 2026

A theocracy since 1979, Iran has never been a typical nation-state. It has been a revolutionary movement, intent on imposing its apocalyptic version of Shia Islam throughout the Middle East and the world. The theocracy has been a messianic regime every bit as triumphalist, bloody-minded, and expansionist as the Nazi regime ever was. As Amir Taheri wrote some years ago in the Wall Street Journal:

The problem that the world, including the U.S., has today is not with Iran as a nation-state but with the Islamic Republic as a revolutionary cause bent on world conquest under the guidance of the “Hidden Imam.”

The problem that the world, including the U.S., has today is not with Iran as a nation-state but with the Islamic Republic as a revolutionary cause bent on world conquest under the guidance of the “Hidden Imam.”

This was married to a belief that the West was too decadent and weak ever to stop Iran in its divinely inspired march to conquest. Iran’s first leader, the Ayatollah Khomenei, famously said, “America can’t do a damn thing against us,” an often-repeated phrase, including by his successor, the recently deceased Ayatollah Khamenei.

Therefore, Iran’s theocrats have never had any qualms with using bloodshed, murder, and terrorism as their tools. In 2007, at a security conference in Bahrain, then Defense Secretary Robert Gates said,

Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents—Christians, Jews and Muslims alike... There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.Advertisement if (window.publir_show_ads) { document.write(''); }

Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents—Christians, Jews and Muslims alike... There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.

Every year since 1984, the State Department. has reported Iran to be the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. To name just a few of the more notable and bloody acts by Iran and its proxies:

1983: bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon

1984: bombing of the U.S. Embassy Annex in Lebanon

1985: hijacking of, and murder aboard, TWA Flight 847

1992:........

© American Thinker