Iran is not the next Iraq War — unless we make the same mistake twice



Is Donald Trump a warmonger? It’s a simple question, and yet an increasingly popular accusation from corners of the political class and commentariat that once saw him as the clearest alternative to globalist foreign adventurism. But such an accusation also defies the record. Whatever else one might say about Trump, he has been — consistently and vocally — against needless foreign entanglements.

To suggest that he has suddenly pivoted toward militarism is to misunderstand either the man himself or the moment we are in. Trump is not easily swayed from his core convictions. Trade protectionism and anti-interventionism have always been part of his political DNA. On tariffs, he is unbending. And when it comes to war, he has long argued that America must stop serving as the world’s policeman.

Is Iran another Iraq, or is it more like Poland in 1980?

So when people today accuse Trump of abandoning his anti-interventionist principles, we must ask: What evidence do we have that he has changed? And if he has, does that mean he was misleading us all along — or is something else happening?

If you’ve lost your trust in him, fine. Fair enough. But then the question becomes: Who do you trust? Who else has stood on stage, risked his life, and remained — at least in conviction — largely unchanged?

I’m not arguing for blind trust. In fact, I strongly advise against it. Reagan had it right when he quoted a Russian proverb during nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviet Union: “Trust, but verify.” Trust must be earned daily — and verified constantly. But trust, or the absence of it, is central to what we’re facing.

Beyond pro- and antiwar

The West is being pulled in two directions: one toward chaos, the other toward renewal. Trust is essential to renewal. Chaos thrives when people lose confidence — in leaders, in systems, in one another.

We are in a moment when clarity is difficult but necessary. And clarity requires asking harder questions than whether someone is “for or against war.”

Too many Americans today fall into four broad categories when it comes to foreign conflict.

First are the trolls — those who aren’t arguing in good faith, but revel in provocation, division, and distrust. Their goal isn’t clarity. It’s chaos.

Second are those who, understandably, want to avoid war but won’t acknowledge the dangers posed by radical Islamist ideology. Out of fear or fatigue, they have chosen willful blindness. This has been a costly mistake in the past.

Third are those who, like me, do not want war but understand that certain ideologies — particularly those of Iran’s theocratic rulers — cannot be ignored or wished away. We study history. We remember 1979. We understand what the “Twelvers” believe.

Twelversare a sect of Shia Islam whose clerics believe the return of the 12th Imam, their messianic figure, can only be ushered in by global conflict and bloodshed. Iran is the only nation in the world to make Twelver Shia its official state religion. The 12th Imam is not a metaphor. It’s doctrine, and it matters.

Finally, there are the hawks. They cheer for conflict. They seek to project American power, often reflexively. And they carry the swagger of certainty, even as history offers them little vindication.

The last few decades have offered sobering lessons. Regime change in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria — none produced flourishing democracies or stable allies. While America is capable of toppling regimes, we’re not so good at manufacturing civil societies. Real liberty requires real leadership on the ground. It requires heroes — people willing to suffer and die not for power, but for principle.

That’s what was missing in Kabul, Baghdad, and Tripoli. We never saw a Washington or a Jefferson emerge. Brave individuals assisted us, but no figures rose to power with whom nations could coalesce.

Is Iran 1980s Poland?

That is why I ask whether Iran is simply the next chapter in a tired and tragic book — or something altogether different.

Is Iran another Iraq? Or is it more like Poland in 1980? It’s not an easy question, but it’s one we must ask.

During the Cold War, we saw what it looked like when people yearned for freedom. In Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, dissidents risked everything for a chance to escape tyranny. There was a moral clarity. You could hear it in their music, see it in their marches, feel it in the energy that eventually tore down the Berlin Wall.

Is that spirit alive in Iran?

RELATED: Mark Levin sounds alarm: Stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions before it’s too late

Alex Wong/Getty Images

We know that millions of Iranians have protested. We know many have disappeared for it. The Persian people are among the best educated in the region. They are culturally rich, historically sophisticated, and far more inclined toward Western ideals than the mullahs who rule them.

But we know Iran’s mullahs are not rational actors.

So again, we must ask: If the people of Iran are capable of throwing off their theocratic oppressors, should the United States support them? If so, how — and what would it cost us?

Ask tougher questions

I am not calling for war. I do not support U.S. military intervention in Iran. But I do support asking better questions. Is it in our national interest to act? Is there a moral imperative we cannot ignore? And do we trust the institutions advising us?

I no longer trust the intelligence agencies. I no longer trust the think tanks that sold us the Iraq War. I certainly don’t trust the foreign policy establishment in Washington that has consistently failed upward.

But I do trust the American people to engage these questions honestly — if they’re willing to think.

I believe we may be entering the first chapter of a final, spiritual conflict — what Scripture calls the last battle. It may take decades to unfold, but the ideological lines are being drawn.

And whether you are for Trump or against him, whether you see Iran as a threat or a distraction, whether you want peace or fear it’s no longer possible — ask the tougher questions.

Because what comes next won’t be determined by slogans. It will be determined by what we truly believe.

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12 countries won’t cut it: Why Trump’s travel ban ultimately falls short



“We will not let what happened in Europe happen in America,” President Trump declared Wednesday, unveiling a new travel ban targeting 12 nations — mostly Islamic-majority countries from the Middle East and Africa.

It’s a strong first step toward fulfilling the original 2015 promise of a full moratorium on immigration from regions plagued by jihadist ideology. But let’s not pretend Europe’s crisis stemmed from poor vetting of criminal records. The real problem was mass migration from cultures openly hostile to Western values — especially toward Jews and, by extension, Christians.

The United States ranks near the bottom of the list for anti-Semitism. That’s something worth protecting — not surrendering to appease lobbyists or foreign governments.

And the new list leaves troubling gaps.

Trump’s call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” was the defining issue that launched his political movement. Nine years later, the rationale is even stronger — and now, the president has the power to make it happen.

Consider the context: Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the alleged Boulder attacker who shouted he wanted to “end all Zionists,” entered the United States in 2022 with a wife and five children — admitted from Kuwait.

The only question that matters: How many more share Soliman’s views?

The numbers are staggering. By my calculation, the U.S. admitted 1,453,940 immigrants from roughly 43 majority-Muslim countries between 2014 and 2023. That figure doesn’t include over 100,000 student visas, nor the thousands who’ve overstayed tourist visas and vanished into the interior.

Soliman is not an outlier. He’s a warning. And warnings demand a response.

Trump’s January executive order called for a 60-day review by the secretary of state, the attorney general, the Homeland Security secretary, and the director of national intelligence to identify countries with inadequate screening procedures. Four and a half months later — following the Boulder attack — the administration announced bans on nationals from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

But Trump didn’t mention anti-American or anti-Jewish sentiment — only logistical concerns like poor criminal record-keeping, high visa overstay rates, and limited government cooperation.

That misses the point entirely.

Jew-hatred — and by extension, hatred of the West — isn't just a byproduct of chaos in failed states like Somalia or Taliban-run Afghanistan. It runs deep across the Middle East, even in countries with functioning governments. In fact, some of the most repressive regimes, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are openly hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood, yet still export radicalized individuals.

And those individuals know precisely where to go: America, where radical Islam finds more tolerance than in many Islamic countries.

Good diplomatic relations don’t mean good immigration policy. Pew’s 2010 global attitudes survey showed over 95% of people in many Middle Eastern countries held unfavorable views of Jews — including those in Egypt and Jordan, U.S. allies.

The Anti-Defamation League’s global index confirms it: The highest levels of support for anti-Semitic stereotypes come from the Middle East. According to the ADL, 93% of Palestinians and upwards of 70% to 80% of residents from other Islamic nations agree with tropes about Jews controlling the world’s wars, banks, and governments.

Source: Anti-Defamation League

Meanwhile, the United States ranks near the bottom of the list for anti-Semitism. That’s something worth protecting — not surrendering to appease lobbyists or foreign governments.

So why continue importing hundreds of thousands of people from places where hatred of Jews is considered normal? Why welcome migration from countries like Iraq, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia — where assimilation into American civic values is practically impossible?

The answer may lie in the influence nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia still exert over U.S. foreign policy. But political cowardice is no excuse for policy paralysis.

Twelve countries on the ban list is a good start. But most don’t reflect the true source of radical Islamic immigration into the United States.

RELATED: Mass deportation or bust: Trump’s one shot to get it right

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Banning immigration from these regions isn’t about infringing civil liberties. It’s about preventing a civilizational crisis. Unlike Europe, which responded to rising Islamic extremism by criminalizing dissent and speech, America can take the wiser path: protect national security without sacrificing the First Amendment.

We don’t need hate-speech laws. We need sane immigration policy.

Unfortunately, bureaucrats in the administration watered down Trump’s original vision. They framed the bans in terms of “data-sharing” and technocratic concerns. They sought narrow criteria and limited political blowback.

But the law is clear. Trump v. Hawaii affirmed the president’s broad constitutional authority to exclude foreign nationals.

That authority exists for a reason.

President Trump rose to power by sounding the alarm about what unchecked migration could do to the West. That warning was prophetic. And now, he has the mandate — and the obligation — to act on it.

Twelve countries won’t cut it. The question now isn’t whether Trump will act — it’s whether he’ll act in time.

Because if we want to avoid Europe’s fate, we don’t just need a new policy. We need the old Trump — unapologetic, unflinching, and unafraid to speak hard truths.

Let’s hope he finishes what he started.

How NATO’s ‘model intervention’ shattered Libya and Europe



In 2010, Muammar Gaddafi made a dire prediction about Europe’s future. While negotiating a deal with Italy to prevent African migrants from using Libya as a gateway to Europe, he warned: “Tomorrow, Europe might no longer be European … as there are millions who want to come in. … We don't know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.”

A year later, Gaddafi was dead. His removal during an Arab Spring uprising created a power vacuum in Libya, allowing nearly a million migrants from Africa and the Middle East to cross the country unchecked into Europe — just as he had foreseen. Years later, the Migration Policy Institute described Libya’s continued instability, stating: “Post-Gaddafi, the trade and extortion of human beings became a central source of income for communities in Libya, often to the migrants’ detriment.”

No territorial body — whether in Africa, Europe, or anywhere else — can truly function as a nation without securing its borders.

At the peak of the migration surge into Europe in 2015, Libya became a primary transit point, with nearly 200,000 migrants per year making the journey. Smugglers charged between $5,000 and $6,000 per person to cross the Mediterranean on unsafe dinghies. Many landed first on the Italian island of Lampedusa before continuing to welfare-rich destinations like Germany and Sweden.

That same year, a separate wave — the “European migrant crisis” — unfolded, likely influenced by Libya’s collapse. This migration, largely over land, passed through the Middle East, Turkey, and Greece before reaching Germany, where then-Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the influx.

The 15th anniversary of Gaddafi’s warning is also a reminder of NATO’s direct role in his downfall. The U.S.-led alliance, facing unprecedented criticism from the current White House, orchestrated the dictator’s removal in 2011. The Arab Spring provided a pretext to eliminate a longtime regional obstacle, setting the stage for the chaos that followed.

Libya remains far from recovery and needless to say has not transitioned into a Western-style democracy. Instead, it resembles a slightly less chaotic version of Iraq, marked by deep tribal and factional divisions. However, a 2017 agreement between Italy and the Libyan coast guard has significantly reduced migrant crossings from Libya to Europe. Meanwhile, rising foreign-led terrorism and organized crime in Germany and Sweden have bolstered the appeal of right-wing populist movements.

NATO’s removal of Gaddafi, once hailed as a “model intervention” by Foreign Affairs, exposed the fundamental flaw of nation-building — failing to account for the vacuum left behind (or, really, just the folly of nation-building itself).

More than a decade later, Libya, like Iraq and Syria, remains fractured not just along political lines but also by tribal and ethnic divisions. Under Gaddafi, Libya had been both a destination and transit hub for migrants, particularly black Africans seeking work in the oil industry. After his fall, many became victims of racial violence and even enslavement by local militias and Islamist groups.

Barack Obama later admitted that failing to plan for Libya’s post-Gaddafi future was his “worst mistake” as president. Reflecting on the crisis, he noted that any stable government must first control its own borders. Given the source, the irony is unmistakable. But the point remains: No territorial body — whether in Africa, Europe, or anywhere else — can truly function as a nation without securing its borders.

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Letters to the Editor: Fat Terrorists, Unruly Interns, and More!

These duties include the periodic disgorgement of Diddle's Mailsack™ in order to read and respond to your questions and concerns. Most of your letters were unfit for publication, but I managed to find a handful deserving of my consideration. Enjoy!

The post Letters to the Editor: Fat Terrorists, Unruly Interns, and More! appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

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1,000 U.S. Soldiers In Niger Need To Come Home Right Now

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Screenshot-2023-10-27-at-5.41.59 AM-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Screenshot-2023-10-27-at-5.41.59%5Cu202fAM-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]Eighty-six senators chose to stand idly by as the president sends their constituents' sons and daughters into harm’s way with no clear objective.

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