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President Donald Trump is not like his predecessors. Confronting a hostile regime in Tehran that has played American presidents for 35 years, the commander in chief took decisive action on Saturday to keep his promise that he would never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Operation Midnight Hammer was a success — America’s fine men and women in uniform destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities and came home safe.
Now begins “the Art of the Deal.” In the aftermath of the war between Israel and Iran, President Trump will need to employ all his dealmaking acumen to maintain a fragile ceasefire and — most importantly — to keep his promise to prevent America from being dragged into another forever war in the Middle East.
Recent history has taught us that it won’t be easy. Between the end of the Cold War and President Trump’s first term, every single American president was drawn into protracted conflicts around the world. They knew how to make war, but not how to broker peace.
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In the Balkans, President Bill Clinton laid the groundwork for liberal interventionism — boots on the ground for “peacekeeping,” moral preening, and no plan for what comes next. Then, in the wake of the devastating attacks on 9/11, instead of confining himself to destroying the terrorists who had used Afghanistan as a base, President George W. Bush implemented this same playbook: launching an invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein while prolonging the U.S. presence in Afghanistan to nation build.
At the time, I supported it, as did more than 70% of Americans and almost 90% of Republicans. But soon, Iraq devolved into a sectarian nightmare that led to thousands of dead soldiers and decades of regional instability. The war consumed Bush’s presidency, shattered GOP foreign policy credibility, and sowed the seeds for the rise of ISIS. Meanwhile, the “good war” in Afghanistan went sour as dreams of a liberal democracy ran up against the reality of the “graveyard of empires.”
America’s experience in Iraq and Afghanistan transformed my view of foreign policy. So much so, that by the time President Barack Obama pursued a disastrous intervention in Libya, I was decidedly opposed to it.
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Millions of conservatives, bitter at being sold a bill of goods by their own party, had this same experience. They wanted a new type of national security policy focused on their needs and interests. And when President Trump — whose longstanding opposition to the Iraq war was well known — announced his campaign in 2016, they rallied behind him.
Throughout his first term, President Trump rewarded their confidence time and again — and proved what the Art of the Deal could achieve on the world stage.
Trump was no dove, mind you.
He dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb used in combat by the United States on Afghanistan, ruthlessly decimated ISIS, and took out Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani. But he always prevented these aggressive actions from becoming protracted conflicts, and he never allowed the Middle East to absorb his attention to the detriment of more important national security priorities: securing our borders and deporting illegal immigrants, pushing our allies in NATO to pay their fair share for our common defense, and confronting America’s number one adversary, China.
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No doubt, the current conflict between Iran and Israel is more serious than any that occurred in the region during Trump’s first administration. And the United States’ involvement is more direct, more dangerous, and more likely to escalate into a wider war if not checked by firm, prudent leadership, capable of completing the President’s stated mission to deny the Iranian regime a nuclear weapon without drifting into other lanes, notably regime change.
But that’s entirely in President Trump’s wheelhouse. This is his moment. This is why millions of Americans, disheartened by the surrender of Afghanistan and grinding war in Ukraine overseen by President Joe Biden, went to the ballot box in November to bring him back to the White House.
He is the only leader in the world who could pull off this daring operation to ensure the safety of the American people without it turning into another Middle East quagmire. And if he can now keep us out of war and focused on the various domestic challenges that confront us — from our falling birth rate to our failing schools — it will be one of the greatest accomplishments in modern American history.
I’m confident that he will.
Why? Because President Trump is not like his predecessors. He isn’t driven by ideology or bought by special interest groups. He is a statesman who makes deals on behalf of the American people. And in this uncertain moment, as we are poised to celebrate America’s 249th Independence Day, that’s exactly what we need. For America’s freedom is hard-won and easily squandered.
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