America is at war with Iran. Trump should ask Congress to declare it formally.

Last week, President Trump began to carry out his threat of massive punishment for Iran’s violations of navigational freedom in the Strait of Hormuz and the killing of U.S. servicemen and women. “They can’t do anything about it.”  he declared. Tragically, the Islamic Republic has already managed to take the lives of 18 American soldiers stationed at U.S. bases in the Gulf.

When Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran in 1979, he effectively declared war on the U.S., “the Great Satan,” and Israel, “the Little Satan.” His war declaration was expressed in the only “diplomatic” language the fanatical Islamist regime knows: “Death to America, death to Israel.“

For the next 47 years, the Islamic Revolution waged its declared war on the U.S. and Israel, and on their friends and allies, either through direct attacks or via terrorist proxies, as on Oct. 7, 2023. They have done so for decades, resulting in the deaths of thousands of American civilians and military personnel and extensive destruction of U.S. assets, e.g., the USS Cole and U.S. bases in the Mideast.

Republican and Democratic administrations have sporadically responded to Iranian aggression in vain attempts to deter future attacks and induce peaceful behavior. But this hopeful and forgiving strategy is doomed to fail, because visceral anti-Western hostility is intrinsically bound up in the brand of Islamist ideology represented by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups.

While those elements are highly pernicious, collectively they represent a distinctly minority segment of Islam. Unlike other strategic anti-Western enemies with which they are closely aligned — Russia, China and North Korea — fanatical Islamists are truly suicidal, and are thus impervious to........

© The Hill