The dark-minded Shia Muslim ayatollahs whose rule oppresses Iran came close to possessing a nuclear arsenal and had to be  stopped. They were hoping to destroy the State of Israel and eventually devastate America. They buried their nuclear productions deep underground where, they believed, no bombs could reach them. But American bombers did put an end to their project with deeply penetrating bunker bombs. The accuracy of the strikes was breathtakingly amazing.

The Israelis who destroyed Iran’s air defenses, killed Iranian officers and scientists, and found out the plans of the Iranian government, deserve all honor and gratitude.

The bombs themselves, the planes that carried them, the people who invented them, those who flew the planes and dropped the bombs perfectly on their targets are all marvelous. Glorious is the leader who ordered the operation: President Donald Trump.

The bombs were dropped on June 22^nd. Then, just three days later on June 25^th, in the United States itself, a Shia Muslim Communist named Zohran Mamdani won the Democrat Party’s majority vote for the candidacy of New York City’s mayor. All too probably he will be elected mayor.

Michael Barone writes at Townhall that Mamdani is “a three-term state assemblyman who calls himself a democratic socialist. He has backed a rent freeze, city-run grocery stores, free buses, putting homeless service centers in the subways, a $30 minimum wage, defunding the police, and replacing police with ‘community safety’ officers”.

His inhumane political philosophy prefers crime to law, turmoil to order, abortion to birth. He and his voters approve the earliest possible sexualization of the children who make it into the world – and the “transgendering” of as many as can be urged into wanting it. They are  for free transport, free housing, free food, free entertainment, free… well, everything. For “the poor”, that is. All to be funded by heavy taxation of “the rich”.

An uncounted number of  “the rich” voted for Mamdani – presumably knowing his agenda. (But how many of them will remain in New York if he becomes mayor?)

Is the threat of a Shia Muslim Communist mayor of New York harder to abolish than deeply buried instruments of mass destruction?

As President Trump likes to say: “We must wait and see.”

Israel has transformed the Middle East with a brilliant campaign against the Khamenei regime.

Victor Davis Hanson sees this. He writes (we quote his article almost in full):

Iran apparently had not adjusted to its new 2025 status—or maybe it had. Most of its bought terrorists are currently either destroyed or anemic.

There is no more ascendant Iranian “Shia crescent” in the Middle East. Russia is no longer a Middle East power, patron, and protector.

The Assad dynasty imploded, flipping Syria from an Iranian proxy into a likely Iranian enemy. Hezbollah, once supposedly the most fearsome of all the Iranian terrorist tentacles, was humiliated and neutered by a series of surreal Israeli operations.

Hamas has been reduced to a subterranean terrorist remnant.

The Houthis’ tit-for-tat encounters with Israel and the U.S. are systematically turning their Yemeni enclave into an impotent dump. At its present rate, the Houthis will likely soon launch their last rocket at Israel or the Red Sea in a country without fuel, electricity, and ports.

Iran itself, last year in a disastrous air war with Israel, lost its air defenses and is now more or less impotent and defenseless against Israeli air incursions. Its oil income has been slashed by 70-80 percent by the renewed Trump sanctions and ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. Israel can destroy all of its oil industry if it wishes and, apparently, send operatives inside Iran itself as it pleases.

Most of the Arab Sunni world is now losing its accustomed fear of Iran. While the weary pan-Islamic solidarity boilerplate of the Middle East remains the same, privately, most Arab nations rely on the U.S. or even Israel to deter Iran—and predicate their own foreign policy on the degree to which they do just that.

With the end of the Biden administration and Obama a distant memory, Iran lost all hope that it could bluster, bluff, and negotiate itself out of sanctions and embargoes—and into nuclear weapons. There are no more John Kerrys or Antony Blinkens in charge, eager to meet Iranian demands. Ben Rhodes’s “echo chamber” Iran Deal is ancient history.

Israel had done more than all of America’s Middle East wars or all of NATO’s global presence to end Iran’s claims on power and the ability to project its brand of terror and fear throughout the Middle East.

So why did a neutered Iran still sound like the fiery Iran of old, when it once terrorized the Middle East and sent its assassination teams worldwide, with its nearly weekly loud threats to wipe out the one-bomb “Zionist entity”?

What was Iran thinking in refusing to negotiate seriously with the Trump administration to disband its nuclear weapons program and “normalize” its role in the Middle East?

Apparently, given its disastrous last two years, Iran still felt its last-gasp claim both internally and externally on power was on spec to stall and delay by negotiating its way to a dozen nuclear weapons, or, barring that, a deterrent consisting of huge stockpiles of conventional guided missiles.

Such a mini-nuclear arsenal, or fleets of long-range, conventional rockets, would, in Iran’s eyes, still frighten Israel, leverage Europe and the West, and eventually recharge its terrorist legions.

To achieve that unlikely deterrent, the theocracy thought it could draw out Trump’s negotiations endlessly with a series of its trademark feints, falsities, and even threats until it had enriched enough weapons-grade uranium to deter Israel, or created a massive missile force that could overcome the Israeli Iron Dome.

Tehran naively assumed that Trump’s own MAGA base forbade him from starting or even reacting to “forever wars.” Thereby, the Iranians may have believed that Trump’s willingness to deal was a signal that he was restrained domestically or naive enough to put up with their trademark dissimulation. And thus, they wished to believe that Trump would either harness Israel or keep distant from it should Israel preempt to end the Iranian nuclear option.

But Trump had always been clear that Iran could never obtain a nuclear weapon, if deliberately unclear about how that ultimatum would actually be enforced.

Moreover, Iran had always failed to grasp that Trump is not a neo-isolationist but rather a Jacksonian. He certainly does not believe in endless wars or, for that matter, any large, preemptive military action, especially on the ground in the Middle East. He loathes nation-building, and would likely never send a single platoon into Iran.

But all that said, the prior fates of the arch Iranian terrorist general Qasem Soleimani, ISIS kingpin Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or the Russian Wagner group in Syria might have reminded Iran that Trump will use force to restore or enhance deterrence and ensure U.S. interests.

When Trump began negotiating with Iran for an end to its nuclear program, he warned the theocracy that it had 60 days to renounce nuclear weapon acquisitions. He apparently had picked such a two-month window, given that any time beyond that date might have ensured Iran would have developed a few nuclear weapons, a reality he knew was untenable for Israel and the U.S.

Iran arrogantly gambled that Trump was bluffing and would stay in endless Iranian bartering while pressuring Israel to stand down so as not to derail his peace efforts. But anyone who knew Benjamin Netanyahu or Trump would know that staying the deadline was impossible, and Iran would likely be hit right after the two-month warning expired.

And so, the regime was hit—swiftly and decisively.

Did Iran think its new Russian and Chinese allies would intervene on its behalf or threaten Israel to stand down? But Russia is bogged down in Ukraine in a new Stalingrad that may have cost it 1 million dead and wounded, with no end in sight. Its military has been weakened. It has no desire to enter any additional foreign conflict. If anything, Putin may soon wish Trump to find him a way out of his own self-created quagmire.

Anyway, an Israeli-Iranian conflict and the subsequent unrest and uncertainty in the Persian Gulf, as far as Vladimir Putin was concerned, would only raise the price of oil and further help feed his tiring Russian war machine.

China is currently trying to avoid a catastrophic trade war with the U.S. It has no desire to prevent the U.S. from aiding Israel. Unlike Russia, China wants no conflict of any kind in the Persian Gulf. It once bought 80-90 percent of Iranian oil, and the Middle East supplies about 50 percent of Beijing’s current oil needs.

So, what was Iran’s backup strategy of resistance if its nuclear infrastructure came under attack before it obtained a bomb? Apparently, it had none.

And in some sense, that is a silly question, given the theocracy has no reason to exist if it is not an exporter of Shiite Persian-sponsored terrorism aimed at isolating Israel, bullying the Sunni Arab world, and scaring the West. Indeed, the regime always believed it would dissolve without terrorist satellites, a nuclear threat, and oil money. Yet what we are beginning to witness after nearly half a century is a terrorist regime with no terrorists, a would-be nuclear bully with no nuclear weapons, and a conventional threat that will soon not be threatening.