Six weeks ago, I praised Donald Trump for taking action against Iran. I even suggested that Trump's willingness to use American power against our enemies was one of his few redeeming virtues.

In private conversations and emails, however, I attached a caveat that I probably should have expressed publicly in that column — so long as Trump, being Trump, didn't muck it up.

With the success of the initial attacks, including the elimination of much of the loathsome Iranian leadership and the destruction of much of their military capabilities, that caveat fell into the background, only to slowly rise to the forefront in the days since.

As many noted, Trump hasn't exactly been clear as to what our goals were in the campaign; let alone how we would achieve them so that we could recognize victory when we saw it.

Regime change was cited. Also, the destruction of Iran's nuclear program. Preventing Iran from spreading terrorism throughout the Middle East through proxies as well.

All laudable, although also intertwined, since the only way to forever stop the Iranian nuclear program and their support for terrorists is to end the regime forever.

Implicit in Trump's approach, as always, has been a simplistic transactional element — that everyone has a price and that everyone will therefore make a deal. The problem is that ideologues don't make deals, or at........

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