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: bombing of the Israeli Embassy Bombing in Argentina

1994: bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Argentina

1996: bombing of Khobar Towers targeting US forces in Saudi Arabia

2003-2011: Iran’s involvement in Shia militia attacks on US forces in Iraq

2010 to the present: Iran’s involvement in Shia militia attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria.

October 7, 2023: The Hamas attack on Israel

The theocracy has been equally brutal and bloodthirsty in quelling internal dissent. Iranians have been trying to throw off its yoke for decades. Before the December 2025 revolt, there were the 1999 Student Protest, the 2009 Green Movement, and the 2023 Women’s Revolt. The regime brutally crushed each one. Since January 2026, the regime is estimated to have murdered over 30,000 Iranians.

What’s enabled the theocracy’s evil is its control of Iran’s vast oil reserves, which are the third largest in the world. Iran does not depend on an internal tax base. With buyers always at the ready, irrespective of sanctions, after Iran’s political and military leaders siphon off huge amounts to their own bank accounts (wealth in Iran is concentrated among the clerics and IRGC commanders, with the Khameini family at the top), they direct the bulk of the oil wealth to funding Iran’s military, domestic police, a vast trans-national terror network, and an aggressive nuclear program, all while insulated from demands from its beleaguered populace or the Western world.

The plume of smoke from the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing, which killed 241 Americans. Public domain.

Given these facts, we must ask, if the world were to allow Iran to create a nuclear arsenal, could it be deterred by the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) from using nuclear weapons or farming out dirty bombs to its terrorist network? The answer to that is a definitive “no.”

As Bernard Lewis, the West’s premier Orientalist, explained, Iran’s theocracy operates outside the constraints of Western logic. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MADD) that worked against the Soviet Union and other nuclear-armed nations cannot be relied upon to work with a theocracy that has messianic rulers who welcome martyrdom and the carnage that will presage the coming of Shia Islam’s hidden Imam:

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. “I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another’s hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.” In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead—hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. “I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another’s hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.”

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead—hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

Those who minimize the nuclear threat of Iran are either ignorant of history or want to see the US and Western civilization fail so that they can rule over the ruins. They accuse the US and others of “crying wolf” about how close Iran has repeatedly come to creating a nuclear arsenal, but history repeatedly proves them wrong.

In 2002, the MEK, a Marxist Iranian resistance group, publicly disclosed the existence of Iran’s then-nascent nuclear program. By 2006, President Bush appeared poised to attack Iran’s nuclear site but was undercut by Democrats and the State Department. Then-Speaker of the House Harry Reid (D-NV) solicited the State Department to write a ludicrous National Intelligence Estimate that stopped Bush in his tracks. The authors said that the nuclear program was purely civilian in nature and that diplomacy would easily deter Iran from reorienting it.

By 2008, Israel was chomping at the bit to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities just as it had destroyed Iraq’s in 1981. But the newly elected President Obama repeatedly (and curiously) refused the help necessary for such an operation. It did not become apparent until his second term that Obama’s reluctance was part of an insane “strategic vision“ to make Iran into a regional power with nuclear capability.

As Iran’s theocracy came ever closer to achieving its nuclear goals, Israel was left alone to counter it without using direct military action. Beginning about 2012, it did so with remarkable effectiveness, using the Stuxnet virus, espionage, and targeted assassinations to continuously thwart the theocracy’s nuclear program.

But such stopgap measures could not work forever. When, in 2025, President Trump said that the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was necessary because Iran was on the precipice of creating a nuclear weapon, he was not “crying wolf.”

One can argue about how effective Operation Midnight Hammer was, but the one thing no one can argue is that it did not change the bloody theocracy’s absolute focus and will to create a nuclear arsenal. As even the Arms Control Association—which opposes President Trump’s Iran policy—freely admitted, “The June 2025 U.S attacks severely damaged Iran’s major uranium enrichment facilities, but not its resolve to retain a nuclear program or its nuclear know-how.”

Since June 2025, the theocracy has been in the process of rebuilding its nuclear program even as Iran’s populace has been economically devastated. It negotiated with Trump this year in bad faith. The theocracy was never going to stop until it had a nuclear arsenal.

So now we come down to it. Democrats want to stop this necessary war or use it for political gain, regardless of the cost to the United States or the world. They ridiculously claim the war is unconstitutional, but our history shows otherwise. Democrats’ only concern is taking power in the US:

There was no imminent threat to justify starting a war with Iran. Instead, Donald Trump chose the path of more chaos — with American lives on the line. I'm joining my colleagues in forcing a vote to stop the president from abusing his power. pic.twitter.com/OIC24ERAna — Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) March 2, 2026

There was no imminent threat to justify starting a war with Iran. Instead, Donald Trump chose the path of more chaos — with American lives on the line. I'm joining my colleagues in forcing a vote to stop the president from abusing his power. pic.twitter.com/OIC24ERAna

I don't remember any other time in U.S. history when one of the two major parties was so desperate for America to lose a war. We're only 3 days into this war, and they're already in full anti-war mode. https://t.co/Us0bzlQ1qj #FoxNews — Andrea Widburg (@Bookwormroom) March 2, 2026

I don't remember any other time in U.S. history when one of the two major parties was so desperate for America to lose a war. We're only 3 days into this war, and they're already in full anti-war mode. https://t.co/Us0bzlQ1qj #FoxNews

A nuclear-armed Iran presents a truly existential threat—a clear and present danger to the U.S. and Western civilization. This is a zero-sum game. The mad mullahs and their theocracy believe themselves the chosen of Allah and will not relent. No more kicking the can down the road. The U.S. either stops them (and the Democrats) now, or our children will be living in a world of horrors we cannot imagine.

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