After the Twelve-Day War of June 2025, President Trump probably thought something along these lines: "We gave those guys a good thrashing. They won't want to repeat the experience anytime soon."

If Iran's rulers were what we call "rational actors," that assessment would have been accurate. But they're not. They're not peace-loving. They don't prefer compromise over conflict. They're not concerned that the people they rule face an "affordability crisis." They don't worry about elections.

Iran's rulers believe – literally, not metaphorically – that they're on a mission from God.

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During World War II, my father served in the South Pacific. Who did he think he was fighting? I know from reviewing his letters back home that it wasn't "the Imperial Japanese government." He was fighting "the Japs."

And G.I.s deployed to Europe, I'm willing to bet, didn't identify their enemy as the Wehrmacht or even the Nazis. They were at war with the Germans. Or the Jerries, or the Huns, or Fritz.

That instinct — to name the enemy as a whole people — is understandable in wartime. It's also often wrong. And if we get it wrong, it's to our detriment.

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Let's take a short break from the imbroglio over delivering paychecks to TSA agents and funding the DHS to recall why we need a Transportation Security Administration and a Department of Homeland Security in the first place.

Because if you're, say, a 22 year old graduating from college this spring, you don't remember when there were no lines at airports, no requirement for IDs, no limits on liquids, no conveyer belts for your shoes, belt, and coat, and no body scanners to determine whether that's a gun in your pocket or you're just glad to see the TSA agent. (Sorry, I can never pass up the chance to repurpose an old Mae West line.)

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On the illiberal left and the defeatist right, America's military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran is being condemned as "a war of choice, not a war of necessity."

I'm here to make the case for wars of choice.

My argument is simple: Delaying wars does not ensure lasting peace. On the contrary, delaying wars has often led to wars more costly in blood and treasure. World War II is the most obvious example.

A war of choice is a conflict we decide to wage to achieve vital goals before our enemies push our backs up against the wall.

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Forty-seven years ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran vowed "Marg bar Amrika!" – "Death to America!"

That declaration of war was followed by multiple acts of war from the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran to the orchestration of two bombings of Americans in Beirut in 1983 to the arming of Shia militias who killed more than 600 Americans in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 to numerous assassination and kidnapping plots.

American attempts to end the war diplomatically failed. Five presidents vowed that Iran's rulers would never be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran's rulers repeated what Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic Revolution, observed in 1979: "The Americans can't do a damn thing against us."

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