The election of Donald Trump in 2024 put an end to the Biden/Harris regime’s long list of historic foreign policy failures, which started with their deadly surrender and retreat from Afghanistan, which then green-lighted Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and all the death and destruction that has followed.

Biden also empowered our adversaries in the Middle East to attack Israel. As you may recall, Barack Obama and Biden funded Iran, sending the regime $1.7 BILLION, $400 million in cash. Biden then released $16 BILLION in frozen assets to Iran, which then armed and funded there surrogate terrorist Hamas and Hezbollah attacks on Israel. Easy to connect the dots.

All of the blood from these wars is on the hands of those who elected Obama and Biden, and stopping that bloodshed will take years.

As I noted last November, Trump now has an enormous uphill political and policy slog to correct the colossal failures left in the Biden/Harris wake, and it will take a long time to right those disastrous policies.

That was also true in Trump’s first term. In 2017, among other foreign policy failures, he had to start undoing Obama’s perilous Iran nuke deal in which Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry paved the path for the development of an “Islamic Bomb.”

The effluent of that “deal” is directly responsible for “Operation Rising Lion,” the latest Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says “will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.”

Netanyahu added, “Eighty years ago, the Jewish people were the victims of a Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime. Today, the Jewish state refuses to be a victim of a nuclear Holocaust perpetrated by the Iranian regime.”

Notably, in addition to the precision nuclear strikes, Israel demonstrated once again its considerable intelligence and surgical strike capabilities by decapitating Iran’s military, and it’s nuclear develop capabilities by eliminating key Iranian military and nuclear scientists.

The list of Iranian leaders eliminated includes the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Hossein Salami, its military Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, the head of Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence Mohammed Kazemi and his deputy, Khomeini’s top military and nuclear advisor Ali Shamkhani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s missile program Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the deputy chief of the general staff Gholamali Rashid, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani (who derailed the latest nuclear talks with the United States), and chief nuclear scientist, Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi.

In short, Israel loudly projected that not only will it take out Iranian nuclear facilities, but it will eliminate the key military personnel involved in the attacks on Israel and those who direct development of the Islamic Bomb.

In May, our military analyst Brent Ramsey outlined the current Iranian threat here and here.

But let’s review, in brief, how we got here. “In brief” means I won’t start with the Biblical Old Testament but with the most recent events leading up to this strike.

Israel has long demonstrated that it will not tolerate the development of a nuclear weapon by the rogue Iranian Islamist State and is willing to strike those capabilities as it did in 2010 with the brilliant Stuxnet cyberattack, which disabled a large number of Iran’s nuclear enrichment centrifuges at Natanz. Israel demonstrated its precision strike capability in the two years that followed with the assassinations of four Iranian nuclear scientists in Tehran.

Fast-forwarding to 2020, Israel hit the Natanz enrichment plant again, and in November of that year, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist and the man behind Iran’s covert nuclear program, was assassinated in Tehran.

On October 7, 2023, Iran’s terrorist Hamas surrogates in Gaza initiated a preemptive attack on Israeli citizens. That resulted in a massive counterstrike against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah, as well as strikes against their terrorist state sponsor, Iran, which has vowed for decades to destroy Israel.

In October of 2024, a year after the Iranian/Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent Iranian ballistic missile attacks against Israel, the Israel Defense Forces took out Iran’s top-secret nuclear weapons research facility, Taleghan 2, in the middle of its Parchin military complex. That was just weeks after Israel demonstrated its incredible resourcefulness by taking out top Hezbollah leaders with exploding pagers.

As Iran brazenly continued to increase its nuclear enrichment capabilities, in March of this year, President Donald Trump sent a letter to Iran seeking to reopen negotiations for a nuclear deal. In April, Iran resumed talks with the U.S., and representatives from both countries met in Oman on April 12 and again a week later in Italy.

On May 16, Trump warned Iran it has to move quickly or suffer the consequences. On May 31, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had dramatically increased its enriched uranium stockpiles with 408 kilograms at 60% purity, which is one small refinement away from weapons-grade. That was a 50% increase in four months. The IAEA warned this was sufficient for multiple nuclear weapons.

In early June, intelligence sources determined that Iran’s “Kavir Plan” was on track to manufacture those bombs at six nuclear sites. On June 10, Trump stated: “Iran is acting much differently in negotiations than it did just days ago. Much more aggressive.”

Indeed, on June 11, the Iranian regime issued threats against U.S. bases and installations in the Middle East, and its soon-to-be-dead Defense Minister, Aziz Nasirzadeh, warned, “If a conflict is imposed on us… all US bases are within our reach, and we will boldly target them in host countries.”

Advance notice of the IDF strike against Iran’s nuclear production capability and select military leaders prompted the evacuation of some embassy personnel and those at other facilities.

Yesterday, the IAEA declared that Iran was noncompliant in its nuclear obligations for the first time since 2005.

As anticipated after months of preparations, the IDF and Hamossad launched Operation Rising Lion. Today, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi notified Israel that Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility was severely damaged. But the fireworks are not over.

President Trump responded to the strikes: “I gave them 60 days and they didn’t meet t. Today’s 61, you know. Today’s day 61.”

He added: “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – and they know how to use it. There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted, “We are not involved in strikes against Iran,” which is to say the U.S. has no military assets directly involved.

Iran called the strikes a “declaration of war” and, as anticipated by Israel, responded with drone strikes which were neutralized in the air by Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. Subsequent Iranian strikes were with ballistic missiles, all on civilian targets, some of which were not intercepted.

Israel will be hitting additional Iranian military and nuclear targets in the coming days.

Bottom line: The IDF has and continues to do what is in the best interest of Israel — and all Western nations — by destroying Iran’s nuke program and eliminating its military commanders and nuclear scientists. Iran has already alienated its Middle Eastern allies and is a pariah, much as are the Palestinians. Notably the dictatorial Iranian mullahs also face significant opposition from the Iranian people. However, retains the full support of the 600-pound bear in the room — Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The Abraham Accords provide some cover for Israel in its actions, and frankly, there are other heads of Middle Eastern states who quietly support these actions.

Finally, while the focus is on Israel’s actions, remember that an unknown number of Islamist terrorists crossed Biden’s open southern border over the last four years, and eventually, a retaliatory attack on American soil is possible.

UPDATE: On 20 June, Rafael Grossi, head of IAEA, in stark contrast to previous assessments, declared: “Iran does have enough material for several weapons. But this should not be equated with a nuclear weapon. We do not have at this point … at this time, any tangible proof that there is a program, or a plan, to fabricate, to manufacture a nuclear weapon.” Grossi then added this ominous qualification: “If there was some activity which was clandestine or hidden or away from our inspectors, we couldn’t know.” Seriously, he said that, as if surely Iran would not have clandestine nuclear weapon development capability.

Footnote: It is long past time that the U.S. implement Trump’s strategic defense initiative, Golden Dome.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.