June 21, 2025

Why did President Donald Trump finally decide to bomb three nuclear sites in Iran on Saturday, including the formidable one in Fordow?

Here’s one possibility: Iran kept insulting him by rejecting his offers or demanding conditions. They were acting like the wily mullahs who ran circles around Obama and Biden. They thought they could still play their old games with Trump, even though Trump was wily enough to know they had no leverage given Israel’s massive assault.

So, when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei kept uttering his usual defiant bluster in recent days, Trump saw right through the bluff. If there’s one thing Trump can smell, it’s weakness.

The dam broke on Friday, when Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, acting like he was calling the shots, brazenly announced that negotiations with the US wouldn’t happen “until Israeli aggression stops.”

According to a report in The New York Post, that was when Trump said enough and decided to strike Iran with “overwhelming force,” which he did the following day.

What will Iran do now to save face?

“The Iranian regime had warned that if America attacked, the US bases in the region would be targets. They threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, creating a global oil crisis,” Mideast expert Dan Perry wrote on his Substack. “If that happens, then this war will move to a new phase in which the goal of the US is to topple the Islamic Republic and free the people of Iran. I’m not sure the regime will be stupid enough to pursue that avenue.”

Remember, Iran’s massive nuclear program was its pride and joy. It was worth all the money, it told its people, because it brought prestige and benefits to the nation.

But with an economy in shambles, the loss of its influence throughout the region and now the decimation of its main nuclear facilities, what do the mullahs have to offer their people except for the brutality of its troops?

Maybe a deal with Trump?

“Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” Trump said on Saturday night. “If they don’t, future attacks will be far greater and far easier.”

Given how little leverage Iran has, and how Trump has shown that he doesn’t bluff, Perry thinks it’s more likely that “talks will commence after the US (and Israel) declare victory. In those talks, Iran will be requested to hand over any remaining fissile material, disavow uranium enrichment beyond 3% civilian levels, end its missile program and cease any further undermining of Arab countries – meaning an end to support for Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Shiite militias of Iraq, Hamas, and more.”

That’s a lovely scenario, but of course we can’t discard the darker ones, which, Perry concedes, can “plunge the global economy into chaos” and “trigger a wider war, possibly even drawing in Gulf states or forcing the U.S. into deeper conflict.” There are already reports that Iran is planning a retaliation.

Over the next few days, we’re sure to hear from Trump haters, anti-Zionists, isolationists, political partisans and others for whom no military action, however successful, was a good idea.

For now, though, let’s take a little moment to reflect on what has happened.

In the Bible, Amalek is depicted as a sworn enemy of Israel and an archetype of evil. After decades of living in fear of a nuclear Amalek, Israelis today are seeing real hope that an existential burden was lifted. For the benefit of Israelis as well as peace lovers everywhere and the good people of Iran, we can only hope that this Amalek will take Trump’s advice before he gets angry again.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they say you have to hit your own bottom before you can make any progress.

Israel hit its own bottom on Oct. 7, 2023.

It’s impossible to overstate the monumental security breakdown that allowed a ragtag gang of Hamas terrorists to invade the Gaza border and massacre 1200 Israelis.

In a region where power rules and a fearsome reputation is a life insurance policy, Israel never looked so weak and vulnerable.

After 77 years of being the “strong horse” of the Mideast jungle, 77 years of miraculous rescues, technological marvels and victories over enemies sworn to its destruction, in one fateful day, powerful Israel suddenly became weak Israel.

In all the noise of recent events, from the horrors of Oct. 7 to the continuing tragedy of the hostages to daily political battles to the war against a nuclear Iran and to the U.S. bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities, it’s easy to overlook one extraordinary development: After the nadir of Oct. 7, a fearsome Israel has returned to the Middle East.

I say this not with a sense of triumphalism but for the simple reason that I want the Jewish state to survive, and there’s no way it can do so if it looks weak.

The return of Israel’s mystique began in Lebanon on Sept. 17, 2024.

If you recall, that was the day thousands of pagers exploded in the hands of Hezbollah terrorists, the kind of terrorists who would have loved nothing more than to murder every Jew in Israel.

Notice what has happened since that “pager day” 10 months ago: Israel has never looked so strong and its enemies so weak. Slowly and methodically, Israel has incapacitated the major threats to its borders from Lebanon, Gaza and Syria. And today, with U.S. help, it is incapacitating the head of the snake, the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose stated mission has always been to eradicate the “cancerous tumor” of Israel.

When we follow Israel’s historic war with Iran, we tend to forget that Israel also fought Iran when it fought its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria – what constituted the “ring of fire” Iran had spent years preparing to finally extinguish the Jewish state.

The Hamas invasion of Oct. 7 was meant to kick off that final solution.

“The Oct. 7, 2023, offensive suggested that Iran — through its proxies, chiefly Hamas and Hezbollah — sought to translate its longstanding vision of Israel’s destruction into reality,” former head of IDF Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin wrote in The New York Times. “Documents seized in Gaza show that Hamas believed it had the support of Iran and Hezbollah as part of a broader plan: a multifront offensive designed to overwhelm and destroy Israel.”

So it’s not just Israel’s reputation that was at stake on Oct. 7, it was also Israel’s existence.

The phrase “existential threat” has been bandied around so much over the years it’s almost gotten stale. Not in Israel. There, it is as palpable and alive as ever. Maybe that’s why Israelis overwhelmingly back their country’s military campaign against Iran, according to a poll released last week from Hebrew University. Despite having to brave daily missile onslaughts and duck into bomb shelters, 83% of Jewish Israelis support the war.

The cowardly targeting of civilian areas only reinforces the genocidal nature of Israel’s enemies, which in turn only reinforces the imperative of a formidable Israel that its enemies will fear.

What happened with the U.S. bombing of three nuclear facilities in Iran, including the big one at Fordow, has accelerated Iran’s regional decline. “What we’re witnessing now across the region is nothing short of the collapse of Iran’s decades-long strategy and ability to project influence,” said Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington in an interview with The Times.

Depending on what happens with the “ceasefire” Trump has negotiated, the next few days and weeks will be consequential. We still don’t know the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program. Much remains up in the air.

But no matter how a weakened and isolated Iran reacts, one thing is no longer up in the air: As far as Israel’s neighbors are concerned, from its sworn enemies to its potential allies, the weak and vulnerable Israel that hit rock bottom on Oct. 7 is long gone, and in its place is a Badass Israel that is ready to help transform the region.

Badass, you see, doesn’t only mean a powerful army. It also means that the safer Israel feels, the more it can use its power to become a force for good; the more it can unleash its multiple resources to benefit the countries of the region. It means that even an imperfect Israel with many flaws can offer its neighbors an aspirational model with more freedoms and economic opportunities.

It means, in short, that the Abraham Accords can one day become the Middle East Accords, when the heroes will no longer be evil theocrats who oppress their people and terrorists who live to destroy, but good neighbors of a Mideast Union who live to grow and create.

We’re still far from that ideal, but the aspiration is also badass.