Trump Targets the Islamic State in Nigeria

National Review Online

Friday, December 26, 2025

 

President Trump sent special Christmas tidings to Islamic militants in Nigeria.

 

While Americans were celebrating the holiday, President Trump announced that he had followed through on his threats to take action against terrorist groups in Nigeria that were persecuting Christians.

 

“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!” he wrote on Truth Social.

 

Specifically, the U.S. launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at two Islamic State bases, and the administration is claiming the deaths of multiple terrorists.

 

Just last month, Trump had raised alarms about the treatment of Christians in Nigeria. Since 2009, estimates say as many as 100,000 Christians have been killed and 19,000 churches have been destroyed. Trump warned that if it didn’t stop, the U.S. “may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing’…”

 

As we noted when he made those comments, Trump is right to focus attention on the treatment of Christians in Nigeria, a persistent problem that has gotten insufficient attention. That said, these militants groups thrive in uncovered spaces beset by all sorts of lawlessness. The strikes were carried out in cooperation with the Nigerian government, but the sort of sustained government campaign on the ground it would likely take to re-establish order is not immediately in the offing. Nor, presumably, would we have the appetite to participate in such an effort.

 

(The strike on Islamic State actors is consistent with how presidents have broadly interpreted the post-September 11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force — anything more expansive should be specifically authorized by Congress, though.)

 

The Christmas strikes are yet another sign that rather being a quasi-isolationist, like some of his most vociferous supporters, Trump is a hyperactive foreign-affairs president. He makes lots of threats, more than he ever carries out, but enemies completely discount them at their peril — as Nigerian militants learned on Christmas Day.