Everything is happening so rapidly these days, that most folks are completely missing the  historic significance of events, as they whizz on past us all. Trump just recently publicly suggested that maybe the U.S. should simply walk away from the Straits of Hormuz, since we don’t really use it that much – that we should let America and Asia fend for themselves for a change. And when one reporter questioned Trump on his rethinking of NATO, Trump quickly responded: “I don’t need Congress for that decision.”

Congress tried to tie the President’s hands in 2023 by creating a sneaky new provision in the NDAA that requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate to withdraw from NATO, but President Trump and his Cabinet members believe those velvet handcuffs are unconstitutional, which leads us to understand that yes, Trump has been rethinking it.

This war will not be the “forever war” that too many Chicken Littles are already warning it will be, as the cry and moan about the U.S. finally taking much needed action against a declared enemy that made no bones about its future intentions to ultimately destroy “Big Satan” and “Little Satan” – America and Israel, and given their indiscriminate targeting of even civilian U.S. facilities across the Middle East, no matter the collateral damage to their Islamic brethren, with thousands upon thousands of missile and drone deliveries, just imagine what the future would have held had we done nothing, as the mass production of drones in tandem with nuclear weapons had been allowed to continue unrestrained over the next few years.

Nothing anyone can say or write will ever convince me that President Trump’s actions in Iran are anything other than justified, righteous, totally necessary and long overdue.

Americans cannot seem to distinguish the difference between fighting wars that smack of military adventurism and “foreign entanglements” and those which are absolutely well founded and necessary to defend U.S. national interests abroad. The current Iran War falls to the latter, and anyone telling you that America is somehow losing this war or that it is somehow a “quagmire” is either an idiot with his ass stuck plumb-all-the-way up his ass, a liar, or an anti-American, subversive Muslim sympathizer, or all three combined. And it’s important for all America to understand that we must see this all the way through to the end and a victory that results in a very real peace that benefits America, for to do less will certainly lead to a quick, rapid decline in American global influence and power and embolden China as it rises to become the new global empire.

One should note that President Thomas Jefferson was one of our Founding Fathers who cautioned his fellow countrymen of the day against foreign entanglements, and yet, in 1805, Jefferson sent the U.S. Marines to Tripoli to make war upon the Barbary Pirates which had been assaulting and boarding U.S. merchant ships off the coast, taking whatever wealth and riches they happened to be carrying.

The hour of the lion has struck, and the weak shall be cast aside like chaff before the storm. Thus spoke the spirit of power, and in this age of iron and oil, its vessel is Donald J. Trump – a man who does not beg, does not whine, does not dilute the American will with the watery pacts of exhausted empires. He castigates our so-called allies not from petulance, but from the iron logic of realpolitik: strength demands reciprocity, or it devours the parasite that clings to its back. For decades, Europe and the lesser satrapies of the West have feasted on the Pax Americana, letting Uncle Sam bleed treasure and blood while they sipped their subsidized wines and preached the gospel of multilateralism.

The world is witnessing an unparalleled achievement, a military work of art and a masterstroke, a victory so sweeping and complete that it defies any precedent. In a matter of days Iran’s leadership has been decapitated, not just at the neck but all the way down to their knees as their Grand Wizard – the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – was killed fast as greased lightening. Their entire military system has been proven to be impotent and ineffective on an actual battlefield in real time and the real world, as the Trump administration has smashed their ability to project combat power, degraded and very nearly completely destroyed their ballistic missile and drone capabilities from a fearsome fusillade to a weak trickle, dominating every segment of the battlespace, from air, sea, space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum, as Trump considers when, how and if ground troops will be deployed and used, as it now seems likely some invasion and temporary occupation of Kharg Island – where Iran’s oil reserves are held – may be in the works.

We all know that casualties are inevitable in any war. To date, U.S. casualties in both material assets and men have been minimal, as bad as it makes us feel for their families. Half of our casualties were from a refueling accident in the air, while the other Americans dies from a lucky missile strike.

Now, in the fires of the Iran War – Operation Epic Fury, as history will name it – the mask has slipped. The Strait of Hormuz did not close by Iranian mines or missiles on March 4th. No, it was strangled by the invisible hand of European insurance cartels, those bureaucratic vampires whose regulatory cowardice shuttered 90 percent of global shipping tonnage with a handful of 72-hour cancellation notices. Seven of the twelve Protection and Indemnity Clubs – European to their rotten core – issued the death warrants. Tanker traffic plunged to zero. Not by force of arms, but by paperwork. And who suffers? Not America. Thanks to Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” resurrection of our energy soul, we pump 24.2 million barrels a day – more than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. We export. We dominate. Europe? They pay $8.10 a gallon while Americans fill at $3.85. Their natural gas doubled in price; ours barely stirred. The Brent-WTI spread yawned to $10 a barrel, a chasm of their own making.

It’s also ludicrous to hear the lies that Trump somehow wasn’t aware that the Iranians would attempt to close the Straits of Hormuz, when they attempted it during his first term – even though our military has conducted literally scores of major exercises through the years that wargamed Iranian IRCG components closing the Straits and moved a huge Naval force into the area in preparation for just such a move. Trump was forewarned of this possibility and yet decided to proceed anyway, in order to end the Iranian threat to America, Israel and the Middle East – the entire world in reality – once and for all, as he and his strategists and advisors balanced the potential benefits against the potential costs and developed strategies to mitigate the risks.

This is no crisis. This is judgement. Trump’s castigation of these allies is righteous because it is true, and truth in power politics is the only morality that endures. Nietzsche would have recognized it: the master morality of the creator, not the slave morality of the dependent. “This is not our war,” sneered Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, as if uttering some profound declaration of independence. Britain’s Stramer, that stuffed relic of faded empire, echoed the cowardice: no wider conflict. Japan demurred. France, ever the poseur, offered silence. Even Australia and South Korea, supposed Pacific bulwarks, found excuses in their ledgers. Trump did not plead for aid because America needed it. He asked because he knew they would refuse – and every “nein”, “non”, and “no” became a receipt, a ledger of betrayal etched in the blood of sailors who now cannot transit the strait their own economies demand. He invoked Ukraine deliberately, mercilessly: you expect us to bleed for your borders against Russia, yet you will not lift a finger for the oil artery that feeds your cities?

The symmetry is brutal and beautiful. If Iran’s nuclear shadow is not Europe’s problem, then why, pray tell, is Vladimir Putin’s shadow America’s eternal burden? The allies have handed Trump the sword of Damocles over NATO itself. He wields it now, with a bit of anger not rage and with the cold precision of a surgeon excising gangrene.

On March 18th 2026, President Trump wrote on Truth Social:

“I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Straight?’ That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies’ in gear, and fast!!”

Behold the realpolitik genius here, raw and unapologetic, the sort of maneuver that would make Carl von Clausewitz nod in grim approval and John Ringo’s grizzled warfighters crack a feral grin. The United States controls, directly or through loyal spheres in Canada, Guyana, and a post-Maduro Venezuela, roughly one-fifth of global oil output. Trump’s 2026 National Defense Strategy codified it: American energy dominance is not mere economics; it is doctrine. While the corporate media drones on about Iran’s “brilliant strategy” punishing America at the pump, the truth is the opposite: Europe’s own regulatory straitjacket – those sanctimonious ESG fetters and war-risk aversion clauses – has severed its own lifeline.

Every European LNG contract signed in desperation is one less tether to Qatar. Every Asian refinery switching to Permian crude is a customer lost forever to the Gulf sheikhs. The strait’s closure is not Iran’s triumph; it is Trump’s forge, hammering a new global energy map with America at the anvil’s center. And the Europeans, those self-proclaimed sophisticates, ran back to daddy within forty-eight hours. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte suddenly discovered “the best way” to cooperate. Two days prior: “This is not our war.” Now: frantic cables and warships in the planning. Samuel Johnson was right – nothing concentrates the mind like the noose. Cuba folded under embargo in ninety days; these NATO freeloaders lasted two. Trump’s torch has welded their refusal into iron precedent: no more one-way streets.

This is why the American people and Congress must hurl their full-throated support behind the President, not as supplicants but as warriors in a shared crusade. The Iran War must be fought to utter victory – a victory that does not merely topple the Ayatollahs’ terror state but shatters its nuclear ambitions, pulverizes its proxy armies, and secures the maritime commons for generations. Anything less is suicide by half-measure. To falter now, to heed the siren songs of withdrawal from the Democrat left or the isolationist fringes, is to invite the wolves: China, Russia, North Korea, and every tinpot despot who has watched the American eagle hesitate. Weakness is the deadliest aphrodisiac in geopolitics. If we do not finish what we started in the Persian Gulf – reopen the strait on our terms, not Europe’s groveling – then Beijing will read the tea leaves in Taiwan Strait maneuvers. Moscow will probe deeper into the Baltics and Eastern Europe, emboldened by our “allies’” proven fecklessness. Pyongyang will test more missiles, laughing at the paper tiger across the Pacific. Adversaries do not respect restraint; they feast on it. Realpolitik demands we grasp this: alliances are not charities. They are instruments of power. Trump has exposed the rot; now we must cauterize it.

Consider the congressional ledger, that sacred yet often profane arena where the people’s will should manifest. Three times the Senate has faced Democrat resolutions demanding immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iran. Three times, Republicans – joined by the ever-stalwart Senator Fetterman, that rare Democrat with a spine of American steel – have crushed them. Rand Paul’s lone libertarian quibble aside, this is not mere procedural noise. It is implied authorization, forged in the fire of repeated votes. The UN Security Council condemned Iran unanimously without slapping America’s wrist. Congress refused to halt the strikes. When every institution of note says, “We will not stop you,” that is consent – raw, unvarnished, and binding. The media howls “war crime, no authorization!” but the record mocks them. Trump operates not in a vacuum but with the people’s implicit mandate, tested and reaffirmed.

For Congress to now waver, to entertain more grandstanding bills or filibusters, would be treason to the republic’s survival. The American people – those salt-of-the-earth producers, veterans, and families who remember the price of weakness post-Vietnam, post-Afghanistan – must rise in thunderous chorus. Flood the switchboards. Pack the town halls. Remind your representatives: this is not Biden’s forever-war quagmire. This is Trump’s surgical reckoning, born of necessity and executed with the precision of a master tactician.

America doesn’t need Iran to eventually become Her ally or a client state; She just needs to see Iran transformed into a nation that’s not run by fanatical, jihadist, apocalyptic, Islamic terrorist psychos who hate Americans and Jews nearly as much as Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Hakeem Jeffries, Candace Owens and Medhi Hasan do.

The Iranian people have not yet taken to the streets to overthrow the regime and cast off the IRCG control, and it’s still too early to tell if they will. But if they do and succeed in wresting control over government levers and mechanisms for themselves and the cause of true freedom and liberty for all the people of Iran, not only will this be the first step in turning Iran back into the once thriving, prosperous nation and culture it once was but it inevitably works to the benefit of U.S. goals as well.

Support President Trump fully, and victory becomes inevitable. The mullahs’ regime crumbles not from sanctions alone but from the hammer of American airpower, naval dominance, and special operations that no European dilettante could dream of matching. Reopen Hormuz under U.S. aegis, not some toothless multinational farce, and the energy flows resume on terms that reward strength. Europe will pay the premium – still with lower prices eventually or prices not too much higher than in February 2026, yes, but with American crude and LNG as the new baseline. Asia will realign, drawn to the reliable exporter that does not fold at the first threat. China’s Belt and Road fantasies fracture when their oil lifeline depends on American goodwill. Russia’s energy blackmail loses teeth. North Korea starves in isolation, its missiles rusting for lack of patrons. This is the viable peace Trump envisions – not the Wilsonian delusion of eternal harmony, but the Machiavellian reality of peace through overwhelming dominance. A peace where America’s adversaries know the cost of aggression: ruin.

To do otherwise? To withhold support, to let congressional doves or public fatigue erode our resolve? Catastrophe. America weakens, her prestige evaporates like morning dew on the desert. The adversaries, those eternal predators, smell blood. China accelerates its Taiwan timetable, calculating that a distracted, divided America will blink first. Russia consolidates gains in Ukraine and eyes the Arctic with renewed hunger. North Korea proliferates nukes and missiles to any bidder, turning the Pacific into a shooting gallery. Iran’s remnants, if not crushed, rebirth as hydra heads – Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas – emboldened to strike anew. The dominoes fall not in theory but in the harsh arithmetic of power vacuums. History is littered with the corpses of republics that chose comfort over conquest: Rome’s late decline, Britain’s post-Suez fade, the Ottoman sick man. We are not fated to join them. Trump offers the antidote – the will to power reborn in red, white, and blue.

In this crucible, Trump’s castigation of the allies transcends mere rhetoric; it is prophetic. They must pull their own weight, or they are no allies at all. Send warships to Hormuz? Escort tankers? Sweep mines? Not as charity to America, but as self-preservation. Their economies choke on $108 Brent crude; ours thrives on $98 West Texas Intermediate [WTI]. Their gas prices soar 75 percent; ours hold steady. The strait’s closure was their regulatory suicide, yet they expected the American navy to bleed for it gratis. Trump’s demand was never about need – it was about dignity. About forcing the Europeans to confront their own parasitism. Lindsey Graham, that neoconservative lion who has long carried NATO’s banner, tore into them with righteous fury: “The arrogance… is beyond offensive.” Even he, forward-leaning on alliances, now second-guesses their value. The receipts pile up: Germany’s sneering dismissal, Britain’s equivocation, Japan’s polite no. These are not partners; they are dependents who have forgotten the bargain. Trump’s Truth Social salvoes – WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE – were not bluster. They were declarations of independence from the old order. He floated walking away from the strait entirely, letting Europe and Asia fend for their own tankers. Congress? He needs no permission to rethink NATO, velvet handcuffs of the NDAA notwithstanding. The Constitution vests commander-in-chief authority; the people’s will sustains it.

We could very well be witnessing the first rumblings of something much more than a mere tiff and the beginning of a permanent break within the U.S.-E.U. alliances. The current rift that has emerged goes far deeper and concern a good portion of Europe’s population, which has largely abandoned former commonly-held cultural values and the principles of free-market capitalism, modern democratic mechanisms, and the ideas of the Enlightenment that planted the seeds of the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Many governments within the E.U. now censor their citizens and imprison anyone who speaks out, while pursuing the expansion of bloated, tyrannical welfare regimes that largely cater to the new replacement cultures and ideologies replacing the indigenous European people at breakneck speed.

Islam today is the fastest growing ideology in the European Union, better known now by most as “Eurabia“.

This political reality and the incredible shift in Europe’s demographics is quite likely playing an extremely heavy part in much of Europe’s initial unwillingness to assist America in conducting this war against Iran or keeping the Straits of Hormuz safe, secure and open to all commercial transports. The rapid Islamization of Europe is now making many European leaders reluctant to move against Islamic nations, even when one of them – Iran – has been the leading state sponsor of Islamic terrorism for well over four decades.

This is the Nietzschean moment: the transvaluation of values in foreign policy. For seventy-seven years, NATO has been the sacred cow, mooing platitudes of collective security while America shouldered 70 percent of the burden. Trump has slain the illusion. The allies’ refusal during their own hour of need – when the oil that powers their factories and heats their homes hangs in the balance – proves the alliance a one-way street. No more. Restructure it or dissolve it; either way, America emerges sovereign, unburdened. The Europeans, sensing the gallows, now scramble. Rutte’s sudden “cooperation” is the grovel of the exposed. They will send assets – belatedly, grudginglyvbut the damage to their credibility is permanent. Trump holds the leverage: reopen the strait without them, then turn to the American voter and ask, “Why defend those who defend nothing?” The polling math shifts. The permission structure for reform solidifies. Tesla fled California’s idiocy for Texas; Europe risks the same exodus of American commitment.

The Iran War, then, is the forge. Victory here is not optional; it is existential. Crush the terror state. Neutralize its nukes. Secure the Gulf under American primacy. Congress must reject every poison pill resolution, every funding cutoff disguised as oversight. The American people must rally – not with yellow ribbons of passive support, but with the ferocity of a nation that remembers Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the folly of retreat. Fund the fight. Arm the warriors. Back the President as he directs CENTCOM to prosecute total victory. No half-measures, no nation-building fantasiesvjust decisive force that leaves Iran a cautionary tale for the ages. The media, those corporate court jesters, will wail about costs. Ignore them. Every day the strait stays closed fattens American frackers in the Permian, Texas, North Dakota. Our energy sector booms while Europe pays the butcher’s bill. The war’s true cost falls on the refusers, and they will pay dearly to crawl back to relevance.

In the end, this is America’s trial by fire. Trump embodies the vitalism Nietzsche extolled: the creator who reshapes the world through sheer assertion of will. Allies falter? Forge new ones, or none. Congress wavers? Remind them of their oaths. The people hesitate? Recall the stakes – a viable peace, not perpetual subsidy. To support him fully is to affirm the republic’s destiny: not as global nursemaid, but as unassailable titan. Failure invites the abyss. China’s dragon stirs, Russia’s bear growls, North Korea’s hermit king sharpens his knives. Emboldened by our division, they advance. But with Trump at the helm, backed by a resolute Congress and people, we strike first, strike hardest, and secure the peace that only strength can guarantee. The Strait will reopen. Iran will fall. America will endure – stronger, prouder, alone if need be, but never weak.

The lion does not negotiate with sheep. He leads the pride, or the pride scatters. Trump has roared. Now America must answer: will we hunt with him, or bleat in the shadows? The choice is ours, but history will not forgive hesitation. Victory in Iran is the path to renewal. Anything less is the death of the West’s last best hope. Thus ends the old order; thus begins the American century, reforged in fire and oil.

March 23, 2026

~ the Author ~
Justin O. Smith Has Lived in Tennessee Off and on Most of His Adult Life, and Graduated From Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, With a B.S. And a Double Major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – Minors in Military Science and English, for What Its Worth. His Real Education Started From That Point on. Smith Is a Frequent Contributor to the Family of Kettle Moraine Publications.