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cultural surrender or humiliation. The requirements are basic: Stop pursuing nuclear weapons, stop developing long-range missiles, and stop funding terrorism.

That is it. Iran could have chosen that path at any time — not just in recent years but over nearly half a century. They could have been reintegrated into the world economy. They could have normalized relations. They could have chosen prosperity over fanaticism.

Instead, they chose escalation.

They chose theocracy. They chose regional domination. They chose to bankroll terror groups and accelerate toward nuclear capability. They chose to become a permanent source of instability.

And now, they are facing the consequences.

The United States has unleashed military power with a level of dominance that has few parallels in history. The Iranian navy has been devastated. Its air force has been neutralized. Missile-launching capacity has been pushed toward collapse. Key industrial targets have been hit. Nuclear facilities have been bombed. Checkpoints and regime infrastructure have been struck with precision.

This is not a stalemate. This is not a quagmire. By any reasonable historical standard, it is a superpower dismantling a hostile regime’s military capacity in real time.

And still, the president continues to offer Iran a way out: Open the Strait of Hormuz, abandon the nuclear program, and the war ends.

The question Americans should ask is not why the United States is acting. The question is why the Iranian regime would rather watch its military collapse than abandon the tools of terror.

The answer is not complicated. The regime’s power depends on oppression at home and aggression abroad. It cannot survive as a normal government because it was never designed to be one. It was designed to rule through fear, religious absolutism and violence — not through legitimacy.

That is why it needs nuclear weapons. That is why it funds terror groups. That is why it must constantly menace the region.

It is not simply a government defending itself. It is a revolutionary ideology seeking expansion.

The comforting Western myth — that radical Islamist aggression would vanish if only the United States stopped “provoking” it — collapses under even minimal historical scrutiny. Expansionist religious movements do not stop because they are left alone. They stop when they are defeated.

Trump was asked whether he believes God supports America’s actions.

“I do,” he said, “because God is good. … God doesn’t like what’s happening.”

He added that he takes no pleasure in war.

That comment will be mocked by the same class of people who mock anything resembling moral clarity. But the underlying point is one Americans should not be afraid to state plainly: Removing tyrants and dismantling terror networks is not immoral. Allowing them to

metastasize is. America is not perfect. No nation is. But the United States remains something rare in human history: a country capable of extraordinary power and, at its best, willing to use that power against evil.

Whether it is sending human beings farther into space than any civilization ever has, or confronting regimes that spread violence across continents, the United States continues to occupy a role no other country can fill.

And Americans should feel proud of that — not in a shallow, flag-waving way but in the serious way that comes from recognizing what we are watching unfold.

The world is watching.

And, like it or not, history is still being written in English.

Ben Shapiro is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and cofounder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author. To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS. COM