If President Trump wants to secure a national security legacy that will never be other than history changing, the time to do so is fast approaching.
The Institute for the Study of War recently published this summary of the moment:
“Senior Iranian officials are continuing to threaten nuclear weaponization, likely to try to deter a potential US or Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities amid new US threats to strike these facilities. Senior Supreme Leader Adviser Ali Larijani stated on March 31 that a US or Israeli strike on Iran would ‘force’ Iran to develop a nuclear weapon to ‘defend its security.’ Western media reported in January 2025 that Larijani had made secret trips to Russia to gain Russian assistance on Iran’s nuclear program. Hardline Iranian Parliamentarian Ahmad Naderi separately stated on March 31 that the United States ‘wouldn’t dare threaten to bomb’ Iran if Iran ‘had an atomic bomb.’ Naderi previously made similar statements in November and December 2024. Larijani and Naderi’s comments echo recent calls from Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officials for the Supreme Leader to allow the development of a nuclear weapon. The recent Iranian threats come after US President Donald Trump stated on March 30 that ‘there will be a bombing’ if Iran does not agree to a new nuclear deal.”
The report actually understates Trump’s warnings because the very blunt statements made by Trump at least twice in the past week are crystal clear and made in public: Iran will not be allowed to “break out” and make a nuclear weapon. Period.
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The president has also been precise. He’d much rather Iran negotiate the process by which it destroys its forbidden weapons program, but the president vowed he will use force if Ayatollah Khamenei refuses to deconstruct its nuke program and do so in a way that is verifiable. Trump sent the “Supreme Leader” of Iran a letter to that effect and he has been clear as clear can be: Iran can chose the easy way or the hard way, but it has to choose. Now.
At least three other presidents —President Joe Biden, President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush— have said similar things, but only Bush was believable, especially after Obama abandoned the explicit red line he drew for Syria about the use of chemical weapons and the Biden Regency botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
All three also said they would move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and then didn’t. Trump did. Trump has also unequivocally supported Israel in its war with Iran and Iran’s proxies. As Prime Minister Netanyahu made clear in an extended interview this week, that was not the case with Biden and we know that Obama was the least supportive president of the Jewish State since its founding in 1948. Even a strong supporter of Israel like W pressured Israel to stop a conflict with Hezbollah after an intense period of combat when world pressure built on the U.S. and Israel.
That won’t happen with Trump and Israel’s end game in Gaza whatever Israel decides it will be. He’s “all in” with Israel and all Israelis know it. Iran knows it too. So do our Sunni allies in the region.
At least a half-dozen B-2 bombers along with tankers and cargo aircraft have deployed to the island of Diego Gacia in recent weeks. The island airbase, a joint US-British base, is about 2,400 miles from from Iran’s southern coast. The B-2s can reach everywhere in Iran.
The B-2s can also carry the heaviest and most destructive ordinance the U.S. makes including the deep-penetrating munitions, the “bunker-busters,” that could destroy many, if not all, of the nuclear program bases and facilities buried deep in Iran’s mountains, locations widely believed to house Iran’s advanced weapons programs and uranium enrichment equipment.
Even as the B-2s deployed to within striking range of the Islamic Republic of Iran, other actions by the American military have caused eyebrows to rise. A second carrier strike force, the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier with its flotilla of supporting ships, joined the USS Harry Truman (CVN-75) in the waters near both Yemen and Iran.
Advanced missile defense systems have also arrived in the region where, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, some 40,000 service members are deployed across at least nineteen sites. The pounding of the Houthis has continued unabated, but the B-2s are not forward deployed to hit Yemen’s terrorist proxies of Iran and their tricked-up drones and speed boats. The target of those B-2s, if they fly into combat, will be Iran’s nuclear facilities if Trump gives the order.
“I wish you civilians would pause to think about second-order impacts when you start talking about war.”
The United States Marine Corps colonel who told me that two decades back is a friend. We were touring Camp Pendleton in the early years of this century, more than a year after the invasion of Iraq when he told me this. I wasn’t advocating for anything because I know too many senior military folks to dare to voice or even have opinions on such things as when and where America’s military might strike, especially in the absence of the classified information Trump and his national security team are working from. But the colonel’s admonition came back to me as the events above made headlines.
Among the many things the Marine Corps did in response to the first years of the war in Iraq was build a mock-up of an Iraqi village in which to train their youngest Marines on the intensity and instant decision-making required of them while patrolling a village that could be home to insurgents planning to ambush the Marines. I got taken through the training site as though I was a deployed “embedded” journalist —something I’d never actually done— and was astonished at the sheer number of decisions a sergeant and his Marines had to make over the course of about 45 minutes in a run-through exercise in the mock-up. The Marines trained and trained and trained.
Our pilots, sailors, submariners and drone operators —we don’t know if any of our most lethal submarines are in the region, but it’s a good bet they are— also train and train and train. But any mission in the skies over Iran will be risky, as will be the consequences of an intensive bombing campaign. Iran’s nuclear program could be set back years, if not decades. The fragile regime could find itself engulfed by fury in the streets as well if Trump’s maximum pressure campaign continues to dry up the regime’s hard currency reserves. But the Iranian people could very well rally to the regime they generally despise if attacked by the U.S. We don’t know. We can’t know. There are too many variables.
But we do not know what Iran has deployed around the world —and in the U.S.— to strike back in response to such a campaign. We will not put “boots on the ground” in Iran, but the mullahs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its expeditionary Quds Force may already have deployed their cells across Europe and the U.S. as pre-positioned “paybacks-in-waiting.”
Iran has about a million men in arms at present. They could not easily embark on any sort of ground invasion that threatens us directly. But Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal may number around 3,000 and some of those can travel more than 1200 miles.
While Iran did not penetrate Israel’s defenses in its two strikes against the Jewish State in April and again in October of 2024, that doesn’t mean Iran cannot hit other countries allied with the U.S.and Israel, including our allies in Europe.
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The U.S. and other allies including the U.K. had warning of Iran’s attacks on Israel last year and coordinated the successful defense. But that is not a guarantee that the third (and possibly fourth, fifth, sixth etc) strike from Iran won’t exact a heavy toll. Taking out all or most of the nuclear sites won’t cripple Iran’s military.
But Trump has drawn a bright red line, though he hasn’t used that term. He knows President Bill Clinton blinked in 1994 when North Korea approached breakout on that country’s nuclear weapons program. The result of Clinton’s stand-down is that North Korea now has a significant nuclear arsenal as well as the confidence such weaponry brings. Nukes provide the sort of shield that allows Kim Jong Un to dispatch tens of thousands of soldiers to Russia to fight alongside Putin’s conscripts in the ongoing war against Ukraine. Having nuclear weapons changes everything for a country —and for its opponents. That’s why Trump made his demand on Iran, made it early in his second term, made it explicit, and made it multiple times. Trump knows what a disaster it will be if Iran gets nukes.
If Trump orders the strikes, expect that they will be largely successful against the targets. But don’t be surprised if an aging and angry Ayatollah undertakes even suicidal actions such as cyberattacks on our infrastructure and terrorist attacks in our cities. It’s the sort of complex decision matrix that presidents have to weigh, judging all risks but also weighing the consequences of kicking the can down the road again.
On the edge of enormous events, American media seems almost oblivious to the highest-of-stake showdown unfolding before our eyes. But they are unfolding and rapidly.
Hugh Hewitt is 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.
