MORNING GLORY: Trump has restored the GOP as the party of defense and deterrence

As the fourth week of the battle with Iran opened, President announced a window of opportunity for negotiations. With whom no one outside of the president and his closest advisors knows. The president did not halt strikes on Iran, and Israel continued to pound its long list of military targets as well as the regimes massive apparatus of repression while the U.S. focuses on degrading the military-industrial capacity of the mullahs. Iran is a country with shattered defenses and no ability to project targeted force. This was accomplished in three weeks. No wonder someone wants to negotiate even as others tell our left-wing media that Iran is winning. 

Commentators have lots of takes, almost invariably driven by their support of, or hatred for, either the president, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel as a whole or some combination thereof. 

No “takes” matter. The conflict will be judged twice: When major combat operations conclude and a year thereafter. There is an unquestionable level of success in “defanging” the regime while decapitating its senior leadership. While no civilian can know, we can guess chaos rages within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”) as it both tries to survive and at the same time sees the command structure that remains jockeying among themselves for power in a post-war Iran. 

Among the crucial results achieved thus far is clarity about the . It can never be trusted by anyone within striking distance of its missile array. It has no boundaries on which countries it will attack and zero concern for civilians. Like its proxies in Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, the IRGC will hide among the civilian population to save their skins. Their “battle plan” is simply to spray missiles far and wide and threaten the Strait of Hormuz. Thats it. Thats what they have left.

Its not nothing. They may cause a global recession. They have certainly incentivized the construction of alternative delivery . Even if the Strait is opened via combat operations and warship escorts, if the Iranian regime remains in power, it will be a priority for the impacted sellers and buyers of Gulf energy to diversify delivery and supply. 

But the regime has been conclusively proven to be frail on the offense, and thoroughly penetrated at every level. The Americans and Israelis know almost everything there is to know about the , and they will have the same degree of knowledge about the C Team that is stood up if any regime survives at all. The powers that remain long ago lost the support of the Iranian citizenry and now the world knows it has almost zero striking power left and only one card — the ability to threaten the Strait. 

A regime that murdered 35,000 of its own people for protesting its many failures is living on borrowed time. The president and the prime minister can escalate or accept a truce, can destroy the countrys power grid or simply pulverize the length of the Strait. Eventually, the near-collapse of the facade of power will be as complete as that of Hamas.

In undertaking this mission, President Trump fully restored the American deterrent that was forfeited by President Bidens collapse in Afghanistan. Trump demonstrated again the remarkable power of the American military and solidified the most important relationship with Americas most important and powerful ally — Israel. 

He has also exposed the hard truth — difficult for people who recall Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl among others — of the sclerosis that has seized most of “old” Europe. The frontline states — , are the new cornerstones of “new Europe” and Ukraine may be counted on their rank. The old allies? We would be fools to trust in them to be of any help in a crisis with China. They are spent. 

With all that clarity comes one more impossible-to-deny truth. With America involved in a battle with a terrorist regime, the Democrats repeatedly chose in vote after vote to keep th