“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you. … If you can wait and not be tired by waiting. … Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.” — Rudyard Kipling
Speculation is flying that President Donald Trump, buffeted by rising gas prices and domestic political concerns, is desperate for an off-ramp and looking for a deal with Iran to end the war. These leaks, whispers and rumors are wrong. While others may be panicking, I know from well-placed sources that Trump has never been more determined to see this military campaign through to completion.
Nearly four weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the president is on the cusp of achieving all of the military objectives he has set — but he understands that none of them are yet fully complete. We are at the enemy’s 20-yard line, but the final yards are always the hardest. All the easy targets have been hit. What’s left are the most hidden, hardened and complex challenges.
“We’re in a red zone,” retired Army Gen. Jack Keane told me in a podcast interview. But to win, the United States needs to get into the end zone, and Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, needs another three weeks for that. Given that time, Keane said, “the combined force will accomplish all assigned objectives … to include opening the Strait of Hormuz by force and keeping it open” and taking “nuclear enrichment … off the board completely by military operations.”
U.S. negotiations with Iran are a sign not of desperation but strength. Shortly after the start of the war, Trump declared that there would be “no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” He has now put a 15-point plan on the table that effectively sets the terms of that surrender. He is willing to talk with Iran — but while he negotiates, he is pummeling the regime.
The message to Iran is that the war can end in one of two ways: Either the regime gives Trump what he demands, or the United States will “unleash hell” and take it from them. Trump is right to pursue both options at once — speaking to the remnants of the regime to see if they are ready to cry uncle, while ruthlessly battering them from the sea and skies.
After Iran’s capacity for nuclear enrichment is eliminated and the strait is reopened, the final military task will be to take control of Kharg Island, through which around 96 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports pass. If the U.S. controls Kharg and the Strait of Hormuz, it controls Iran’s oil — and thus its economy. Trump, in other words, will then have this brutal, terrorist-supporting regime’s head in a vice from which there is no escape.
At that point, he can impose terms of surrender: No more nuclear enrichment, no more ballistic missile production, no more support for terrorist proxies and, importantly, no more massacres of protesters. If regime remnants violate any of Trump’s terms, he can tighten the vice at will — either by cutting off Iran’s oil and forcing the economic collapse of the country or by striking it militarily.
Though anything can happen, it is unlikely the regime will disappear in the next three weeks. But once military operations conclude, the United States and Israel will have created ripe conditions for Iranians to restore their lost freedoms. Iran’s surviving leaders should be told in no uncertain terms: If you continue executions or fire on protesters, you will pay a heavy price. This threat will create space for the Iranian people to organize, form an opposition and return to the streets to force democratic change.
This much is certain: We are closer to the end than the beginning — and the military campaign is “exceeding expectations,” Keane said. In the next three weeks, the U.S. aims to eliminate Iran’s capacity for nuclear enrichment, offensive military action and military production; take control of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s oil; and set conditions for eventual regime collapse. If it achieves those goals, that “would be a stunning accomplishment by anybody’s definition, except the people that are ideologically opposed to anything that Donald Trump does.”
All of that is within the president’s grasp if, like Kipling’s great man, he continues to keep his head while all around him others are losing theirs.
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