Iran Chose the Hard Way

National Review Online

Saturday, February 28, 2026

 

Well, it’s going to be the hard way.

 

President Trump likes to tell adversaries of the United States that we can do it the easy way or the hard way, and Iran, for the second time in a year, is finding out what’s entailed in the latter.

 

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Trump announced the start of a massive military campaign. The strikes have been conducted jointly with Israel, representing an unprecedented level of cooperation between the two allies.

 

In a combined air and sea attack, the U.S.–Israeli strikes hit anti-aircraft capabilities, ballistic missile sites, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities, and top leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who in an early stunning success was killed in the raid, according to Trump and Israeli officials.

 

In a video statement released early this morning, Trump explained that since the radical Islamic regime seized power in 1979, it has been a destabilizing force in the region and a leading sponsor of terrorism that has been responsible for countless deaths of Americans, including servicemembers killed in roadside bombings in Iraq. Trump reiterated that he was committed to ensuring that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, but negotiations made it clear that its leaders were never going to abandon their pursuit. Thus, he said, military action was the only course remaining.

 

Trump made the case for regime change, but he said ultimately it would be up to the Iranian people themselves. “When we are finished, take over your government,” he told them. “It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations. For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see how you respond.”

 

In what looks to be an early miscalculation, Iran aimed at U.S. assets in the Arab Gulf states. An Iranian drone hit a high-rise building in Bahrain, and another one hit the Kuwait International Airport. Other strikes included sites in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan. As a result of these actions, Saudi Arabia, which initially tried to stay neutral, condemned “heinous Iranian aggression” and said that “all capabilities” would be at the disposal of the Gulf states in any counterattacks against Iran.

 

As we watch the awesome display of U.S. military might, we remember that history has given us many reasons to have humility about the exercise of power. Whenever military force is used, the results are unpredictable and potentially dangerous. Trump himself warned in his remarks that there could be U.S. casualties. It’s obviously difficult to effect regime change from the air, even with Khamenei presumed dead. And we don’t have any good idea what might replace the Islamic Republic, although it’s hard to see how — for cold-blooded U.S. purposes — anything could be worse than the aggressively anti-American, terrorist regime in place in Tehran for nearly the last 50 years.

 

Another risk is that expending munitions and military assets against the Iranian regime will leave America weaker in a potential fight against China (even if there is also an argument that the fall of the regime would deprive China of a key ally in the Middle East).

 

While there is a case to be made that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force was written so broadly that it could justify this campaign without congressional approval, by shutting out Congress, Trump has also short-circuited the attempt to make a case to the American people as to why this action was necessary at this time. Such a campaign of public persuasion is necessary to sustain any protracted campaign against Iran.

 

All that said, for decades, the unwritten rule was that Iran could kill and maim Americans, and we could never directly hit back. To his credit, Trump rejected this implicit arrangement last year in Midnight Hammer and, this time, has gone further. The campaign promises, at the very least, to lay waste to the nuclear and military infrastructure of the Iranian regime. This will set back these programs and capabilities in a way that will be difficult to recover from any time soon and will make it impossible for the regime to project its malign influence throughout the region on the level we’ve seen in recent decades.

 

Too often, American leadership has taken the easy way out by looking the other way regarding Iranian perfidy or seeking to paper it over with foolish diplomatic deals. In this sense, too, Trump is taking the hard way. We wish him and the U.S. military every success.