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When the Can Finally Stops Getting Kicked Down the Road – HotAir

It’s been almost fifty years of Iranian malevolence, open acts of aggression, financed proxy violence, intentional global economic instability, and the muttered threats of terrorism used as blackmail to manipulate weak and supine world leaders into acquiescence with demands. Some out of fear, some out of raging internal conflicts between woke Western white guilt complexes, feeling duty-bound to respect other cultures, no matter their guts’ inclination telling them how sick the culture was. Or arrogant, progressive leaders, willing to bow to that same culture to make amends and prove that we felt they were our moral equals.





Almost fifty years of being the murderous troll under the world’s bridge, threatening to blow it sky high every other week, even as it plucked travelers off the boards to consume and satiate its bloodlust. 

Whatever manifestation of evil spewed forth from the bearded, turbaned trolls under the bridge, the world would always turn away, turn that other cheek. Ignore what was going on under the bridge, wiping a tiny tear for the random victims summarily pulled off the bridge, while coldly considering them sacrifices to keep the trolls themselves from climbing up onto the roadway and into our world proper.

Eyes averted, fingers in ears. Humanitarian aid, and pallets of cash feeding almost fifty years of malignant troll tumor growth.

Much of it is very personal to Marines. Much of it is very personal to our family.

Three years ago, I wrote a piece on the fortieth anniversary of the Beirut bombing.

40 Years After The Marine Barracks Bombing: We Have Sacrificed To These Savages Before

We lost a dear friend in that ghastly BLT building rubble, along with 219 more of our Marine Corps brothers, 58 U.S. Navy sailors, 3 U.S. Army soldiers, and 58 French Army troops.

Iran paid for that truck bomb. We have never forgotten.

In 1990, a Marine Corps colonel named William Higgins was kidnapped, tortured, and hanged by Hezbollah. I will never get the vision of his body swinging in the grainy black and white photo they took when they found him.

Iran paid his murderers. We have never forgotten.

All the IEDs that maimed and killed Americans in Afghanistan were purchased with Iranian money.

On the twelfth of November, 2016, we lost our precious nephew, U.S. Army SSGT John Perry, to a suicide bomber on Bagram.

Iran paid for the Taliban bomb that murdered John, two fellow soldiers, and two contractors, as well as horribly injuring eight other soldiers. Some lost limbs.

…The Taliban took responsibility for the bombing, which the group said took four months to plan and carry out.

“The [assailant] had entered the base very cleverly and performed a successful attack that left dozens of invaders killed while they were busy in taking exercise,” Taliban leadership wrote in a press release following the attack.

During the incident, Perry was killed nearly instantly. Rescue workers attempted to resuscitate Iubelt, while Brown initially survived, directing emergency personnel to care for the others and encouraging soldiers even as he was gravely wounded. He died less than a month later at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

They left behind grieving parents, wives and children.





We have never forgotten.

A few short years later, our own Ebola was dodging Taliban rocket attacks at Bagram, and just last year, another nephew, little brother Crusader’s youngest, was bunkering down on a deployment to Israel thanks to incoming Iranian-purchased missiles.

Iran paid for all the carnage.

And we will never forget.

We’ve watched the Iranians play Lucy with the football successfully so many times that when the nuclear talks restarted after the strikes this past June, and continued through the horrific reprisals the regime visited on those magnificent Iranians portestors, my heart started to sink a little.

But I still had hope that they would push something maybe just this much too far with Trump, and miscalculate out of complacency. After all, they had no real experience with Trump other than Soleimani’s ring finger – he’d been beset by the devils in his first term. Why should the mullahs think this would be any different?

Then I saw this in Bloomberg last Friday and wondered…what are they thinking?!

HAVE THEY LOST THEIR TOWEL-WRAPPED MINDS?

Iran Seen Carrying Out Activity at Bombed Nuclear Sites

Iran is conducting regular and unexplained activity at bombed uranium-enrichment sites, United Nations atomic inspectors said, potentially complicating talks with the US over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Satellite imagery shows work taking place at sites targeted by the US and Israel in June, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a report on Friday. The nature of what’s happening there is unknown to inspectors, he said, as they’ve been blocked from making examinations since that 12-day conflict.

The IAEA has been unable to verify the state and location of Iran’s inventory of near-bomb-grade uranium for more than eight months. Ongoing talks between Washington and Tehran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program are set to resume next week.

Saturday morning, we woke up to the news that, yes, indeed. The towels had been wrapped too tightly, and, consequently, the United States and Israel were in the process of teaching an almighty FAFO lesson for the ages.

Last night, watching Ingraham, we found out that a multitude of Chinese cargo planes had landed in Tehran in January, offloading what analysts believed to be weapons systems. There were enough flights of significant-sized aircraft to be termed an ‘airlift.’





A Coordinated Signal? As U.S. General Visits Israel, China Flies 16 Military Cargo Planes to Iran

…The Chinese airlift then arrived as defensive support for Iran, coinciding with General Brad Cooper’s visit to Israel. This aligns with leaks from American and Israeli sources regarding strong Chinese support for Iran in the face of any potential military strikes. Israeli intelligence and military reports published by newspapers, such as “Maariv,” indicated that more than 16 Chinese military cargo planes landed in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in just 56 hours. It is believed that these Chinese military aircraft transported advanced air defense systems, electronic warfare equipment, and possibly anti-ship missiles, with the aim of bolstering Iran’s defensive capabilities against any imminent American-Israeli attack. This military cooperation between China and Iran falls within a broader framework of long-term strategic, military, and intelligence agreements between the two countries, such as the “25-year agreement,” which includes massive Chinese investments in exchange for oil supplies.

  The Chinese airlift comes days after similar movements by Russian military transport aircraft, which recorded approximately six flights during the first month of January alone. This is unusual military activity in the region and significantly higher than in previous periods.

 China’s primary aim in this move to supply Iran with military cargo planes is to shift the balance of power in the Middle East in Iran’s favor against Tel Aviv. This rapid Chinese airlift is seen as an unprecedented step to break American air dominance in the region and protect its interests in Iran. This complicates the military calculations of US General Cooper and the Israeli side before deciding on an attack, especially given China’s strategic timing in supporting Iran. The two events can be linked as a clear Chinese message to Washington that any military escalation against Tehran will be met with direct Chinese logistical and technical support. This makes General Cooper’s visit to Israel and the region not merely a joint US-Israeli defense coordination, but part of a broader confrontation involving major international powers such as China and the United States.





This could not be allowed to stand.

Period.

The well-established Iranian arrogance and self-assurance in dealing with waffling Americans gave their representative in Geneva an exaggerated sense of his own security.

Last Thursday was the last negotiation day thanks to classic Iranian intransigence.

A last chance to avert war with Iran played out Thursday in Geneva, where Trump administration officials told Iranian counterparts they must not take certain steps needed to build a nuclear bomb.

It didn’t go well.

As the U.S. delegation laid out its position that Iran couldn’t enrich uranium for the next 10 years, the Iranian side balked, said a senior Trump administration official who described the meeting on condition of anonymity.

Iran has an “inalienable right” to enrich uranium, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, told the Americans. And the U.S. has an “inalienable right” to stop you, Steve Witkoff, a member of the U.S. delegation, replied.

After having heard the U.S. demands, Araghchi started yelling at Witkoff, who was accompanied at the meeting by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, among others, said the senior official.

“If you prefer, I can leave,” Witkoff said.

Trump’s team had offered them the moon – even to the point of enriching uranium for the Iranians in order to be able to scale up power plants and other uses.

…The US negotiation team offered to even pay for their energy if they stopped enriching Uranium and the Iranian Regime turned that down. ( this was in the longer version of this tv interview last night on Hannity )  

That’s when Whitkfoff and Kushnet knew they would never get a deal and never get the Iranian regime to abandon their nuclear ambitions and that they were not being honest brokers

They bragged about how much enriched uranium they’d hidden away.





…without any shame that they controlled up to 60% of the enriched 460 kilograms of uranium and were aware that with this they could make 11 nuclear bombs — that was exactly the starting point of their negotiation position. So, here it is — they were proud of it.”

📌 “They were proud that they bypassed all oversight protocols to reach the stage where they could create 11 nuclear bombs.”

The can is no longer rolling down the road, and the troll is not only being pounded out from under the bridge, but everything he’s built in the chasm and caverns below is being blasted into dust.

I have no problem with any of it.

The Trump team has taken a year to work with the regime, and it’s produced not one iota of change in anything they’ve done for 47 long years.

It’s long past time for a reckoning. It has to be one helluva one and I have faith that it will be.

The latest replacement set of Iranian leaders wanted desperately to chat about things, and Trump said, ‘Too late.’

President Donald Trump says the U.S. and Israel have successfully eliminated Iran’s air force, navy and leadership on Tuesday.

Trump made the statement on his Truth Social account, noting that Iran’s replacement leaders have reached out in hopes to talk with the U.S.

“Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said ‘Too Late!'” Trump wrote.

The president made the statement in response to an op-ed in The Washington Post hailing Trump’s ability to “change the world without putting boots on the ground.”

Of course, he probably meant that literally, as Israel just hit the meeting for ‘Who’s next in the line of succession,‘ so the chances of many of the guys who asked to talk being around now are slim to none.

Israeli forces struck an Iranian Supreme Council gathering on Tuesday as the group was meeting to choose a successor to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a senior Israeli official told Fox News.

Fox News’ Trey Yingst reported the update on live on Fox on Tuesday morning, saying the move “speaks to the Israeli intelligence about this war.”

“They just targeted the meeting in Tehran where what’s left of the leadership was gathering to choose a new Supreme Leader,” Yingst said.

Whack-a-Mullah continues. 





And I’m perfectly at peace with that, too.

I want to leave you with an amazing piece of commentary by, of all people, CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil last night.

major dad and I looked at each other across the room with ‘Did he really just say that?!’ wide eyes.

But he really did say it.

…A refreshing alternative to the mindless parroting of the Dems’ dopey “war of choice” narrative.

TONY DOKOUPIL: If you’re looking for an origin point of this current war, don’t look to the earliest hours of this Saturday. Look back to November 4, 1979. That was the day Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, capturing 52 Americans and parading them in blindfolds for the whole world to see.

WALTER CRONKITE: A new and daring element was disclosed today in the Iran crisis.

DOKOUPIL: For the next 444 days they were held captive, the tally kept nightly by Walter Cronkite. Finally, the hostages were released but that wasn’t the end of the story either. Far more bloodshed was to come. In 1983, 241 U.S. service members were killed in their barracks by an Iran-backed suicide bomber in Beirut. Americans can argue, and they are, over whether this is a war of necessity. But what’s clear from the history is that the fuse of this explosion is 50 years long. And has included the loss of thousands of American and Iranian lives. Every president since Carter has tried to end this conflict. In 2015, President Barack Obama announced a deal to stall Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a deal that President Trump replaced with a campaign of maximum pressure, and now military might.

DONALD TRUMP: Today the United States military continues to carry out large-scale combat operations in Iran, to eliminate the grave threats posed to America by this terrible terrorist regime.

Tony: That history is why the president’s allies in Congress say he hasn’t started a war with Iran- he is finishing one.





And Dokoupil really said it perfectly.

Trump is finishing this. Finishing this long war that we didn’t start.

Thank God.

#SemperFi


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