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Just days ago, the United States and Israel conducted one of the most daring military campaigns in modern history, striking the heart of Iran’s nuclear program. President Trump’s decision sent a clear message to Tehran and the world: America will not tolerate nuclear extortion.

The operation shattered not just centrifuges, but decades of myths pushed by the Iranian regime’s apologists, escalation alarmists, and anti-American influencers masquerading as foreign policy realists.

Here are five critical lessons we’ve taken away from Israel’s operations and President Trump’s targeted strikes: 

Lesson #1: Israel Proved Itself the Ideal ‘America First’ Partner
  • Israel carries its own weight–and more. Conservatives often talk about building alliances in which our partners share the security burden with the United States. Israel just gave a masterclass in the America First approach: They eliminated our enemy’s nuclear scientists, took out IRGC generals and the regime’s terror apparatus, and destroyed missile sites and infrastructure — all with their own forces. Each of these targets directly threatened U.S. citizens and interests. Israel took care of our interests. 
  • Israel accomplished everything it could without U.S. help. Israel dismantled a shared threat without asking for a single American boot on the ground. They did everything in their power to eliminate Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, only turning to the U.S. for what they didn’t have: B-2 bombers and bunker busters for Fordow and other key nuclear sites. That’s the opposite of free-riders, who wish to use the U.S. military as the tool of first resort. Israel was also prepared to act on their own and had readied contingency plans in case America chose not to strike.
Lesson #2: Escalation Alarmism was Misguided
  • U.S. intervention did not lead to World War Three. During the Biden Administration, many anonymous Biden officials warned that sending F-15s, Abrams tanks, or long-range missiles to Ukraine would spark nuclear war. Now, similar voices claimed Iran’s supposed allies—Russia, China, and Pakistan—would retaliate in devastating fashion against U.S. strikes. Instead, Iran’s Axis partners issued perfunctory statements, which is why Republicans like Sen. Cotton rightly told his Senate colleagues to ignore the fearmongers’ repeated predictions of armageddon.
  • America was not entangled in endless war. For weeks, left-wing influencers, failed TV hosts, and their social media allies insisted U.S. intervention would be disastrous. They predicted our military would be forced into a protracted intervention leading to mass American casualties, $30/gallon gasoline prices, and a wider war in the Middle East. They promised another “forever war” but direct American military involvement only amounted to about two hours in Iranian airspace. The President’s strikes are restoring America’s trust in use of force after decades of foreign policy blunders.
  • Iran folded under pressure. Hyperbolic warnings about Iran’s retaliation never materialized. Iran’s air force was dismantled, and its missile arsenal heavily degraded. When faced with real American pressure, Iran folded and turned to negotiations because it is no match for the Israeli military and U.S. force. Tehran’s response showed the regime’s defenders overestimated - or intentionally inflated - Iran’s strength and hid the regime’s vulnerabilities, whose strategic edge has always been terrorism and asymmetric operations designed to avoid accountability.
Lesson #3: MAGA Republicans Reject Isolationism and Favor Strength Abroad
  • President Trump ignored calls to abandon Israel and appease Iran. For days, left-wing ideologues and anti-interventionists pleaded with the White House not to strike Iran’s nuclear program or even defend Israel. President Trump dismissed their arguments and proved yet again that the media’s portrayal of MAGA foreign policy as isolationist is pure fiction.
  • MAGA voters overwhelmingly back a muscular foreign policy. The Reagan Institute’s latest polling confirmed that the conservative movement firmly stands with a hawkish approach to Iran: 90% of MAGA Republicans agreed Iran must be stopped from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Three in four MAGA Republicans want the U.S. to be more engaged overseas–a 20 point increase since 2024. They are backing Peace Through Strength and bucking the isolationist outliers who live online.
  • Republicans in Congress stand by President Trump’s strike. On June 27, the Senate roundly rejected Sen. Tim Kaine’s misguided war powers resolution, which sought to take away the president’s ability to strike Iran. Congress rejected this political theater and showed they not only support President Trump’s bold action against Fordow–the institution wants to ensure he can conduct future strikes if necessary.
Lesson #4: The CCP Tests America at Its Own Peril
  • Countering China starts with degrading its partners. Beijing has long been closely aligned with Tehran, which gave China a convenient anti-American outpost in the Gulf to destabilize the region, divert U.S. attention, and give Beijing leverage in global energy markets. But by degrading Iran and exposing the CCP as an unreliable security partner to Tehran, President Trump showed that we can also undercut China in the Middle East–and that the fight against the CCP will be global.
  • President Trump’s Iran strike sent a warning to Beijing: don’t test America.  Just as Biden’s deterrence failures in Afghanistan and Iran set the conditions for war in Europe, Trump restoring deterrence in the Middle East—whether by taking out Qasem Soleimani or forcing the Houthis to back down—signals to China that American strength is back and violating our red lines will have consequences.
  • A defense buildup is more important now than ever. Deterring CCP aggression will require more than strength in the Middle East. The U.S. must invest in modernizing our military capabilities, reforming our foreign military sales process and expanding our footprint in the Indo-Pacific. That’s why Congress must fully fund the defense budget request and pass supplemental funding.
Lesson #5: The Road to War Runs Through Appeasement
  • Weakness forces harder choices later. Biden’s refusal to punish Iran for its nuclear escalations all but ensured strikes against Iran would be necessary later. The primary reason the United States had to deploy American B-2s was because Biden failed to prevent Iran from getting to the brink of a bomb in the first place. After watching the U.S. fail to enforce its red lines for years and obsessively chasing a JCPOA revival, Iran’s leaders did not believe America’s threats of military action were credible. The best way to avoid needing U.S. strikes is enforcing credible military deterrence across theaters.
  • Appeasement emboldens adversaries. For years, the left insisted that giving sanctions relief and diplomatic niceties would moderate Tehran’s behavior. Instead, the regime pocketed every concession and used its windfall to fund Hezbollah, arm the Houthis, and terrorize the Middle East. The result of Biden’s appeasement strategy wasn’t de-escalation, but open provocation: hundreds of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, an accelerated nuclear program, and proxy attacks against Israel, culminating in October 7. 
  • Projecting strength keeps the peace. For decades, U.S. presidents have misused force in the Middle East with misguided interventions and hollow threats—most infamously President Obama’s unenforced “red line” in Syria— causing many to think we shouldn’t use our military at all. But using force appropriately prevents conflict rather than escalating it. President Trump’s strike on Fordow proved that targeted and effective U.S. action can cripple adversaries and restore deterrence–all without U.S. casualties, ground troops, or nation-building. Conversely, tolerating Iran’s decades of attacks on the U.S. only invited more bloodshed.