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In the last twenty months, the world has gasped as the military forces of the United States and Israel have dealt anti-Western terrorists one blow after another. In July 2024, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the terrorist organisation Hamas, was killed in a Tehran guesthouse after attending the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President, Masoud Pezeshkian. In September 2024, several Hezbollah leading terrorists were killed when their phones exploded. In June 2025, the US Air Force and Navy dropped bombs on three Iranian nuclear sites, halting the attempt by the Mullahs to develop nuclear weapons. At the same time, Israel and Iran fought a twelve-day-war. At the beginning of January 2026, US forces went into Caracas, captured the narco-terrorists Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores, and brought them to the US. At the end of February 2026, in a stunning display of their unrivalled strength, intelligence, and technology, US and Israeli forces attacked Tehran and took out Iran’s ‘Supreme Leader’ Ali Khameini, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and many intelligence and military officers. While the Israeli and US forces tried to hit only military targets, the Mullahs retaliated with missile attacks on Israel’s civil population, but also on targets in neighbouring Arab states, turning them into their bitter enemies.
Clear and Present Danger
Were the US and Israeli attacks justified? They certainly were if the objective was to respond to a clear and present danger to these two countries. The Iranian Mullahs began their regime in 1979 by taking hostage 66 Americans at the US Embassy in Tehran, parading them blindfolded in public, and only releasing them after 444 days. Thereafter, they did more than merely chant, ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’. In 1983, Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed 241 American military personnel in Beirut. In 1996, they killed 19 American airmen in Saudi Arabia. Between 2003 and 2011, Iran-backed local militia killed at least 603 troops in Iraq. In 2023, Iran-backed Hamas terrorists killed 46 Americans and took 12 hostage in an attack on Israel. In 2024, the Mullahs plotted to kill President Donald Trump. Israel has all this time been subject to a barrage of missiles and drones from Iran and its proxies. Iran-backed Houthis from Yemen have repeatedly attacked ships on the Red Sea (exempting those from China and Russia). Needless to say, in early 2026, the Mullahs brutally suppressed protests against their regime, killing at least 30 thousand Iranians, while they were spending their oil revenue on developing nuclear weapons and subsidising terrorist organisations. What is surprising is not that the US and Israel are now attacking Iran, but how little they have done until recently to meet the provocations from Tehran. Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?
Regime Change?
The attacks are legally and morally more problematic if the objective is to bring about regime change in Iran. The Americans have no mandate to act as the world’s policemen, and when they have tried to do so, they have failed abysmally, in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq. The regime of the Mullahs is horrible, but it is for the Iranian people to remove it. But when critics bring up Iraq, two fundamental differences should be noted. First, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein turned out not to possess any weapons of mass destruction, but the Mullahs are certainly trying to develop nuclear weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles. Secondly, the US and Israel are not invading Iran as the US did in Iraq. Their objective is clear and limited: to destroy the nuclear capabilities of the Mullahs and to punish them for their deadly aggression over the years. Regime change is a desirable side effect rather than the objective of the attacks. What will happen in Iran will depend on the local men with the guns. Will they, and can they, continue to suppress the population, or will they follow the example of the military elites of Romania in 1989 and Venezuela in 2026 and sacrifice their leaders in order to survive? Only time will tell.