HUGH HEWITT: Trump faces key decision on military action against Iran’s nuclear program

The most important decision of President Donald Trump’s life is before him. 

It is the decision of whether or not to order the United States military to assist Israel in destroying what remains of Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. The U.S. has the capabilities to do so. Does President Trump have the will to order it be done? 

If he does, he will almost certainly bring this war to an end and open the road to a vast expansion of the Abraham Accords. 

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It is unrealistic to believe that the hard-liners around Ayatollah Khamenei will want to formally capitulate to the U.S. It is even more difficult to envision the “Supreme Leader” of Iran, Ali Khamenei —who has been a reckless fanatical ideologue for 36 years as dictator over the Persian people—ever countenancing the return of Iran to being a “nation instead of a cause” to borrow from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace scholar Karim Sadjapour.

But if President Trump orders our military to destroy the most hardened targets in Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, he will be ending a war that has been underway since first Ayatollah Khomeini and now Ayatollah Khamenei began waging against the U.S. in 1979, a war that has befuddled and defeated the best hopes and most complicated plans of every president since Jimmy Carter, who was shocked by the medieval fanaticism of the “true believers” behind the coup of the 1978-1979 revolution which toppled the Shah and then eliminated all other aspirants for government in Iran. 

Trump would stand alone as the president who understood how to defeat this evil regime. He will be seen by history as the president who had the strength and vision to finally end the malign aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s rulers. 

As Trump did to ISIS he can do to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ most ambitious terror project: acquiring nukes and the ballistic missiles on which they can ride far and wide around the globe. Whether or not most of the world’s leaders outside its alliance of tyrants say so, they will congratulate Trump privately as will history publicly. 

It is important to note that when then-plain-old businessman and real estate developer Donald Trump came down the escalator 10 years ago on June 16, 2015, to announce his candidacy, he included in his remarks the warning that “Iran is going to take over the Middle East…Think of it. Iran is taking over Iraq, and they’re taking it over big league.”

Trump added —ten years ago!— his pledge about Iran and nuclear weapons: “I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And we won’t be using a man like Secretary Kerry that has absolutely no concept of negotiation, who’s making a horrible and laughable deal, who’s just being tapped along as they make weapons right now…”

Donald Trump laid out his entire program in that speech and the most important parts of it deal with Iran and China. 

China is a superpower which must be dealt with carefully, the worst instincts of its regime deterred, its exploitation of the world stopped. 

But Iran is the immediate menace because if it gets a nuclear weapon, the fanatics who run that regime will use their first weapon against Israel and their second against us.

The regime atop the Persian people, oppressing them terribly, is different from every other adversary of the United States and the West because it is a theocracy, and one with horrific visions of the “end times” which does not reject, but which could actually encourage nuclear war. This extreme branch of Shia Islam is a uniquely evil threat to the world. 

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And President Trump is in a position to end the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs and destroy the practical steps those ambitions require for the foreseeable future while setting a precedent —a “Trump Doctrine”— for the ages: Do not threaten or kill, wound or kidnap Americans and America, for we will stop you from doing it again. 

The appeasement caucus within the United States is loud. It’s “sunk costs,” especially for those with fingerprints on President Obama’s disastrous “JCPOA” agreement or President Biden’s disastrous decision to end President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign from his first term, are lined up urging opposition to Trump’s decisive action. They know their legacies are already in ruins, but they do not want President Trump’s to grow beyond the Accords, Operation Warp Speed and many other accomplishments. They fear being exposed as foolish and wrong more than they fear America being endangered. 

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Most of all, they do not want Trump remembered alongside the presidents who brought hot or cold wars to an end. 

President Trump can join the first rank of presidents with this decision. Pray he makes the right one. 

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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