RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/president-trump-speaks-with-bold-action/

Last Saturday, Israel’s operation to eliminate the existential threat of a nuclear armed, genocidal regime reached a spectacular culmination with President Trump’s massive strike against three of Iran’s most important nuclear weapons facilities. The strikes settled the debate over whether Trump would, or should continue to pursue a diplomatic resolution to 46 years of the mullahs’ aggression and the West’s serial appeasement. Trump settled the debate with powerful, decisive action of a sort that our country has avoided for nearly five decades of “diplomatic engagement” and “preemptive cringing” that rationalized our failure of nerve.

But the existential danger of the Iranian theocrats’ nuclear ambitions has never been in question. That didn’t matter to a few Republican “no foreign entanglements” and “endless neocon wars” Congressmen and advisors, who have rejected the existence of the threat, mainly by saying Iran is not capable of, nor interested in possessing nuclear weapons. But that claim has been preposterously false. Just recently, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported, “Iran carried out multiple implosion tests, a key military skill necessary for developing the atomic bomb. Implosion tests do not have civilian nuclear uses.”

Additionally, according to The Straits Times, “At least until Israel’s attacks, Iran was enriching uranium up to 69 percent purity and had enough material at that level for nine weapons if enriched further, according to the IAEA yardstick. That means Iran’s so-called ‘breakout time’––the time it would need to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb––was close to zero, likely a matter of days or little more than a week, analysts say.”

Another argument from some Republicans of an isolationist bent deployed the neocon strawman of “forever wars” that do not directly serve our national interests and security, are poorly managed, and needlessly cost American lives and resources. But the conflicts these critics have in mind––the Afghanistan War, the second Gulf War against Iraq, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and the Obama-Clinton NATO adventurism in Libya––are false analogies with Israel’s campaign to eliminate the threat of an apocalyptic, messianic genocidal regime that is the world’s most lethal state sponsor of terrorism, now on the brink of possessing nuclear weapons.

https://www.thefp.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The president warned that he wouldn’t tolerate a nuclear Iran. He meant what he said.

President Trump promised he would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Last night, with seven B-2 bombers and a dozen 30,000-pound bombs, he made good on that vow. The world is better off for it.

Trump announced Saturday evening that the U.S. had completed a “spectacularly successful” strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites at Natanz, Esfahan, and Fordow. The last of those is a heavily fortified facility buried some 300 feet deep in a mountain in Iran’s Qom Province. Although Israel has bunker busting bombs, none have the size and destructive power of the most advanced American bombs, with the capability of destroying or severely damaging the site.

In a moment of political decisiveness and courage, Trump deployed those bombs, despite strenuous objections from the “restrainers” in his administration and parts of the MAGA coalition.

“There’s no military that could’ve done what we did,” Trump said during a brief speech to the nation Saturday night. He is correct. As Niall Ferguson and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant recently noted in these pages, Fordow was essentially impervious to assault. There was one bomb that could cut through its defenses: America’s GBU 57A/B Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP). And there was only one plane built to deliver that bomb: the American B-2 Spirit.

“With a single exertion of its unmatched military strength,” Ferguson and Gallant wrote, “the United States can shorten the war, prevent wider escalation, and end the principal threat to Middle Eastern stability. It can also send a signal to those other authoritarian powers who have been Iran’s enablers that American deterrence is back.”

That is exactly what this White House has done.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/22/donald-trump-on-the-iran-strikes-pithy-powerful-and-to-the-point/

Let’s not beat around the bush: as a speechwriter at the highest levels of politics and business for 45 years – including the most successful presidential campaign in history – this commentator can present you an undeniable truth.

President Donald J. Trump’s remarks Saturday night in the wake of America’s “spectacular military success” striking Iran’s key nuclear facilities didn’t necessarily amount to an oration for the ages. But they did showcase a heroic man rising to a historic moment – and then some – with a pithy, powerful and pointed address.

Pithy: Your correspondent has in the past agonized over 45’s “every-which-way riff-apaloozas” and penchant for “detours and travelogues” in which he “double-covers every subject and theme.”

Not this time. With a declaration weighing in at a trim three minutes, 19 seconds, Trump didn’t waste one of his mere 525 words. He leaped into his literally earthshaking news, stating the clear objective of the attack – “the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror.” 

And then immediately and forcefully “pre-butted” any doubts about the achievement of that objective with a stout insistence that the pariah state’s “key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

The commander in chief crisply moved into a convincing and compelling defense of the actions he had ordered and graciously thanked the team that carried them out – including his Israeli partners, the “great American patriots” of the U.S. military and their leaders. Then segued smoothly into a plea for peace and a sharply, shockingly straightforward statement – given the namby-pamby double-speak in which matters of diplomacy are usually expressed – of the consequences should Iran not respond to his overture.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/22/confronting-chinas-commercial-malign-influence-in-africa/

In another welcome sign of the Trump Administration’s focused prioritization of American interests in foreign policy, the State Department’s Senior Bureau Official for African Affairs recently rolled out a clear-eyed approach to U.S. engagement in Africa. As part of a long-overdue restructuring of the State Department, the Trump Administration articulated a directive to U.S. diplomats that puts enhanced trade and commercial diplomacy at the forefront of advancing U.S. interests, with the American private sector squarely in the lead as the engine of mutual prosperity and expansive growth. As highlighted throughout a hearing by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently, threats from Chinese activities across Africa, especially commercial activities, directly undermine U.S. interests across the continent.

Subcommittee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) laid out the challenge directly, calling China “the most significant long-term strategic threat to the United States” and highlighting that throughout Africa, “China is exercising its military, economic, and political power and advancing its authoritarian agenda, all while undermining the sovereignty of African nations and the strategic interests of the United States.” To help confront this harmful influence directly, the Trump Administration’s updated strategy prioritizes the need to reduce barriers to entry for U.S. companies and level the playing field for American businesses. Fair, clear, and equal rules of doing business, coupled with strengthened institutions and the rule of law to uphold those standards, are the opportunity the private sector seeks as it evaluates prospective markets. Coupled with broader Trump Administration reforms at trade promotion and enhanced prioritization ensuring American competitiveness in Africa, this strategic focus on “trade, not aid” is what both our African partners and the American people want.

The success of this strategy goes beyond the ongoing reorganization and strategic restructuring of the state. As Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-ID) noted during another recent hearing focused on issues in East Africa, “There are countries where meaningful engagement is possible—but only with sober judgment and clear-eyed realism. We must stop building U.S. policy in Africa around individual leaders and instead focus on strengthening institutions, expanding private sector ties, and empowering the region’s young and dynamic populations.” That clear focus requires careful analysis of the various ways China’s coercive activities have been successful in the past to help inform what is needed to expand commercial relationships in Africa.

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/middle-east/the-decision-that-will-define-trump/

I can understand President Trump’s taking his time to decide whether or not to intervene in the Israel/Iran war, given the strength of the ‘no new wars’ sentiment of much of his base.  In deference to them he did not rush into a decision.

However, he was caught up by two considerations of his own devising.  Firstly, his firm and repeated assertion that Iran will never be allowed a nuclear weapon.  And, secondly, his demand that allies step up to the plate in defending themselves if they expect US help.  Implicit in that demand is that the US will help those friends and allies who help themselves.  Israel has done that in spades.  And, in doing so, it is rendering a great service to the rest of the world.

If Trump did not support Israel at this critical time, as he has now done, how seriously should, for example, the Albanese government take his demand to increase our own spending?  After all, the effective US contribution would not involve boots on the ground.  Just dropping two or three bunker busting bombs on selected sites from virtually uncontested airspace.  It would pose no risk of escalation from other state parties because they have not already intervened against Israel.

What is the downside?  There is a risk that Iran would strike US facilities in retaliation and that, undoubtedly, would hurt Trump domestically.   It would not, however, materially damage US power. There is a risk that the MOAB bomb might not have been able to penetrate the Fordow fortifications.  But two or three strikes would probably increase the chances.  It would be surprising if it did not do significant damage.  There is speculation the facility could be 100 metres or more below the surface.  But no matter how far underground it is, there must be surface level access points, and it would be strange if Israel did not know where they are.  With modern guidance systems a MOAB can be delivered straight through the front door — or any other door, for that matter.

I believe that Trump genuinely deplores war, as I do.  However, that does not make him a member of the kumbaya brigade, any more than it does me.  No military action comes without risk.  But sometimes the risk of inaction outweighs the alternative.

How, for example, would Taiwan – already in some doubt about US resolve to defend it – feel about a decision by Trump not to take all steps available to help Israel rid the world of the risk of Iran having a nuclear bomb?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/misunderstanding-trump/

Many are now demanding that Trump act abroad in the way they think he had promised and campaigned–which can be mostly defined as how closely he should parallel their own version of MAGA.

But Trump’s past shows that he never claimed that he was either an ideological isolationist or an interventionist.

He was and is clearly a populist-nationalist: i.e., what in a cost-to-benefit analysis is in the best interests of the U.S. at home and its own particular agendas abroad?

Trump did not like neo-conservatism because he never felt it was in our interests to spend blood and treasure on those who either did not deserve such largess, or who would never evolve in ways we thought they should, or whose fates were not central to our national interests.

So-called, optional, bad-deal, and forever wars in the Middle East and their multitrillion-dollar costs would come ultimately at the expense of shorting Middle America back home.

However, Trump’s first-term bombing of ISIS, standing down “little rocket man”, warning Putin not to invade Ukraine between 2017-21, and killing off Qasem Soleimani, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and many of the attacking Russian Wagner Group in Syria were certainly not Charles Lindberg isolationism but a sort of Jacksonian—something summed up perhaps as the Gadsen “Don’t tread on me”/ or Lucius Sulla’s “No better friend, no worse enemy” .

Trump’s much critiqued references to Putin—most recently during the G7, and his negotiations with him over Ukraine—were never, as alleged, appeasement (he was harder in his first term on Putin than was either Obama or Biden), but art-of-the-deal/transactional (e.g., you don’t gratuitously insult or ostracize your formidable rival in possible deal-making, but seek simultaneously to praise—and beat—him.)

Similarly, Churchill initially saw the mass-murdering, treacherous Stalin in the way Trump perhaps sees Putin, someone dangerous and evil, but who if handled carefully, occasionally granted his due, and approached with eyes wide open, could be useful in advancing a country’s realist interests—which for Britain in 1941 was for Russia to kill three-quarters of Nazi Germany’s soldiers, and, mutatis mutandis, for the U.S. in 2025 to cease the mass killing near Europe, save most of an autonomous Ukraine, keep Russia back eastward as far as feasible, and in Kissingerian-style derail the developing Chinese and Russian anti-American axis.

Trump was never anti-Ukraine, but rather against a seemingly endless Verdun-like war in which after three years neither side had found a pathway to strategic resolution—a war from the distance fought between two like peoples, one with nuclear weapons, and on the doorstep of Europe.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/20/trumps-careful-america-first-approach-to-irans-nuclear-weapons-program/

he mainstream media has been in overdrive this week, claiming that President Trump’s MAGA base is prepared to revolt if the president decides to drop bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment site because this would violate his America First principles to keep America out of new and unnecessary wars.

President Trump answered these criticisms decisively when he told The Atlantic staff writer Michael Scherer that, since he originated the America First concept, he alone decides what it means. Trump also told the reporter that stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon aligns with America First principles:

“For those people who say they want peace—you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.”

Trump’s statement did not come as a surprise to those of us who have studied his America First approach to U.S. national security and why this groundbreaking approach to foreign affairs was so successful during Trump’s first term. (Full disclosure: I edited a book on this topic published in May 2024 titled An America First Approach to U.S. National Security.)

There is no question that the America First approach repudiates the failed foreign policies of prior Republican and Democratic presidents who embroiled our nation in endless wars and doomed nation-building efforts in areas of the world where there were no U.S. strategic interests. This approach is also a backlash to efforts by Democratic presidents to enmesh America in globalist trade agreements and treaties that were favored by the liberal elite but harmed U.S. security and the American worker.

This led to Trump’s America First approach to U.S. national security. A primary requirement of this approach is a competent and decisive president who exercises strong leadership, appoints exemplary national security officials, and implements a coherent and effective foreign policy to protect America from foreign threats and promote its interests abroad. The America First approach requires a strong military, the prudent use of U.S. military force, and keeping U.S. troops out of unnecessary and unending wars.

The America First approach is not America alone. It means working in alliances and with partners to promote regional security while requiring alliance members and allies to carry their full weight in defending security in their regions.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21688/trump-iran

If US President Donald J. Trump wants actual long-term peace in the Middle East, like it or not, there is no alternative other than allowing the departure of Iran’s theocratic terrorist dictators and liberating the Iranian people – just as, after World War II, the US liberated Germany and Japan to enable the election of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Germany and the highly successful democracy in Japan.

More negotiations are just the usual stalling tactic of the Iranian regime. Interminably negotiating some “deal” — which, based on their track record, Iran will cheat on, no matter how vigilant its guardians are, just allows Iran’s regime a 24-karat opportunity to resupply, regroup and terrorize the region again.

The last thing Trump needs is “help” from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US urgently needs to spearhead not another porous, fake “nuclear deal” but real security, stability and freedom — not only for millions of Muslims, Christians and Jews, but also for the great people of Iran who have been forced to suffer under vicious psychopathic despots long enough.

For real peace, Trump needs to be the Churchill of our time. Let Israel finish the job. It is for us.

The Israel-Iran war erupted as Palestinians were marking the 18th anniversary of the Hamas coup against the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip.

On June 14, 2007, the Iran-backed terror group staged a violent coup that lasted for a few days and resulted in the death of hundreds of PA loyalists, some of whom were lynched in public squares, while others were thrown from the top floors of high-rise buildings. Human Rights Watch reported on June 12, 2007:

“In internal Palestinian fighting over the last three days, both [the PA’s ruling] Fatah faction and Hamas military forces have summarily executed captives, killed people not involved in hostilities, and engaged in gun battles with one another inside and near Palestinian hospitals…

“On Sunday, Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Muhammad Swairki, a cook for President Mahmoud Abbas’s Presidential Guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City. Later that night, Fatah military forces shot and captured Muhammad al-Ra’fati, a Hamas supporter and mosque preacher, and threw him from a Gaza City high-rise apartment building.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21680/ran-pursuit-of-nuclear-weapons

The findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency report, which were which are being discussed at this week’s IAEA meeting in Vienna this week, should certainly leave the Trump administration in no doubt about the extent of the duplicity that has long characterised Tehran’s dealings with the IAEA over its nuclear ambitions.

The findings should also persuade Trump to adopt a more robust approach in his dealings with Iran.

This is not warmongering; this is peace-mongering – to prevent Iran from creating even greater devastation later.

Rather than persisting with his efforts to appease the ayatollahs, the publication of new damning evidence about Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme should persuade Trump that he has no serious option other than to confront Tehran over its deceitful nuclear activities, as well as its ballistic missile programme, also able to conventionally blackmail Iran’s oil-rich Sunni neighbours, Europe and eventually possibly the US itself.

Amid concerns that US President Donald J. Trump is backtracking on his pledge to confront Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, new evidence pointing to Iran’s clandestine attempts to develop nuclear weapons should persuade the Trump administration to make the Iran threat one of its top priorities.

The latest evidence that Tehran has spent the past few decades developing nuclear weapons has come in the form of a bombshell report published by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN-sponsored body responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities.

The IAEA has previously identified a number of glaring inconsistencies in Iran’s official declarations about its nuclear programme, which have resulted in the imposition of Western sanctions.

There has, for example, been a long-running dispute lasting nearly two decades between Iran and the West after IAEA inspectors found traces of undeclared enriched uranium at the top-secret Parchin military facility, located around 20 miles southeast of Tehran.