Donald John Trump deserves recognition, appreciation and praise for his historic defense against Iran. No other American president acted to defend America against Iran’s barbaric siege. On the contrary, most American presidents—particularly Obama—appeased or cooperated with the totalitarian enemy. The Islamic dictatorship, as I recently wrote in my essay, “Iran Gets Just Deserts,” declared war on America and has been attacking Americans – including the barbaric 2022 assault on American Salman Rushdie, targeted by Iran for death on Valentine’s Day in 1989 and knifed in an act of savagery by an Islamic terrorist during an author appearance in New York – for 47 years. President Trump understands this and his retaliation against Iran as commander-in-chief proves that he grasps what’s just.
Yet President Trump declines to make, let alone close, the case against Iran. Polls show that Americans initially opposed retaliation and, weeks later, pummeled by the media crusade against all things Trump, including America’s defense against Iran, most Americans continue to oppose U.S. retaliation. As a Trump critic who once titled one of my early essays denouncing the New York City businessman “transitional Trump,” I know that the strike on Iran demonstrates that President Trump can be a pivotal President in defense of the United States.
Here’s the speech Donald Trump ought to deliver in a nationally televised address:
“Two score and seven years ago, America was attacked at an embassy in Iran. The facts in evidence are undisputed: chanting “Death to America!” and sponsored by ayatollahs in an Islamic dictatorship, Iran’s been at war with America ever since. Facts in evidence also demonstrate that I’ve been denouncing and forewarning against America’s appeasement of Iran in the media since it happened. When I was elected president, I swore an oath to protect and defend this great republic based on individual rights, which was founded 250 years ago this year.
I intend to keep my promise. The time for appeasement is over. America’s back. We will not submit to jihad. America will not be conquered. As a nation, we are young, proud and virtuous—Americans are as defiant as we were in 1776.
“This is our greatest virtue.
“This is because here, the individual is free. America, unlike dictatorships, authoritarian regimes and theocracies such as Iran, is not founded on religion. America’s founded on reason and rights. Here, everyone is free to express themselves and live free. Gays are not persecuted and stoned to death for being gay. A woman does not live in fear to work if she chooses—she can wear what she wants and exercise free choice. Look for proof no further than at the First Lady’s official White House portrait as an example of the truly liberated, emancipated American woman—and at the brave and courageous example of my chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who rises to each challenge with grace. In America, there’s no government control of what a woman wears, thinks, says and does. Here, in the greatest nation on earth, the individual is an end in himself with inalienable rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.
“This is what America under my leadership acts—and will act—to protect and defend. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio lead the way in this military retaliation as we bring an end to an unavenged, unprovoked war by a gang of thugs in a once great and ancient nation known as Persia.
“As my administration and the United States government prepares for the semiquincentennial, I invite you to unite in harmony with fellow Americans to celebrate our founding principles of individual rights on Independence Day on the Fourth of July. Fire up the grill and watch the fireworks as Americans toast with solemn reverence for our founding fathers’ foresight and forbearance in creating a nation based on the rights of the individual and smile in joyful celebration of making America great again. Ours is a nation in which the individual is born free to express himself and to think, read, write, create, trade and live free, making wonderful and beautiful works of art, progress and innovation in the social system Ayn Rand once described as an unknown ideal, capitalism, which my administration is acting to restore.
“In the meantime, I implore you to check your premises and study these past 47 years of terror brought upon our great nation by the ayatollahs in Iran.
“Within days of that black Tuesday in September 2001, philosopher Leonard Peikoff correctly argued in a full-page ad in the New York Times that “Truman and Eisenhower [had] surrendered the West’s property rights in oil, although that oil rightfully belonged to those in the West whose science, technology, and capital made its discovery and use possible. The first country to nationalize Western oil, in 1951, was Iran.“
“America’s appeasement began in earnest on November 4, 1979, the day Iran declared war on America, when Ayatollah Khomeini’s thugs stormed the U.S. embassy in Teheran, Iran, seizing Americans and holding 52 Americans as prisoners for 444 days. Despite a previous attack, the embassy’s U.S. Marines were given orders not to shoot.
Americans were blindfolded, beaten and held in dank prison cells. During one interrogation, an Air Force officer had several teeth knocked out. Jihadists told another prisoner, who lived in Virginia, the number of his child’s school bus.
Iranian-sponsored acts of war against America include:
- Truck-bombing 241 Marines in Lebanon, the worst single attack on Marines since World War 2
- Kidnappings, executions and airline hijackings
- The bombing of the S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000.
- The 9/11 Commission notes that Iran sponsored and/or coordinated the September 11, 2001 attack.
- Iran sent “soldiers of God” to Maryland in 1980 to assassinate a former diplomat critical of Islamic fundamentalism, who was gunned down at his Bethesda home.
- Another target was the U.S. Navy commander whose ship, the U.S.S. Vincennes, had been attacked by Iranian guns in the Persian Gulf. During the American ship’s defense, the Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner. In 1988, his minivan exploded in San Diego while his wife was driving.
- Iran ordered the assassination of writer Salman Rushdie, threatening attacks on his U.S. publisher and U.S. bookstores. Rushdie was savagely attacked in 2022 in New York.
- “Death to America!” chants continued unabated, moving from Teheran streets to Iran’s parliament.
“The rise of jihad in Iran is a gradual story of appeasement by the West. It started with a monster named Khomeini who once traveled in disguise to arrange marriage to a nine-year-old girl.
“America is a secular republic. Here, one is free to worship any or no religion or God. America shall remain free from sea to shining sea—forever free.
“My fellow Americans, we cannot do this without defending our borders and our sovereignty. There is no higher purpose for the role of government than the protection of individual rights; this means our defense comes first and foremost. I will neither wait for nor tolerate an attack on the United States of America. As your elected president, I will not stand by and wait for a mushroom cloud, silent mass death or whatever delusions of terror and destruction the ayatollahs have threatened or brought upon Israel and our allies and this goes for any enemy or adversary including China.
“I want you!—to rally around America in defense of Americans. Will you?
“Under a Trump presidency, America fights back. We the people do so in the greatest military history of practices and arts of our finest leaders, such as Washington, Patton, MacArthur, Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant—the Texans at the Alamo—and the defiant passengers on United Flight 93.
“We stand united and strong. Americans love this world and this earth with Goodwill toward man and with supreme dedication to peace through strength.”
“You can’t negotiate peace with somebody who comes to kill you,” Golda Meir once said. The woman who Israel’s prime minister was right. Let us get this overdue defense done and have peace in the Middle East. may God Bless America. Let’s roll.”
This is the speech Trump ought to deliver which can unite Americans behind America to topple Iran.
In the aftermath of the September 2001 siege on America, Leonard Peikoff argued that the West faces “catastrophe in the long term.” Dr. Peikoff dared to ask:
“When should we act, if not now? If our appeasement has led to an escalation of disasters in the past, can it do otherwise in the future? Do we wait until our enemies master nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare?
The survival of America is at stake. The risk of a U.S. overreaction, therefore, is negligible. The only risk is underreaction…”
Leonard Peikoff concluded 25 years ago that:
“There is still time to demonstrate that we take the war against terrorism seriously–as a sacred obligation to our Founding Fathers, to every victim of the men who hate this country, and to ourselves. There is still time to make the world understand that we will take up arms, anywhere and on principle, to secure an American’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on earth…The choice today is mass death in the United States or mass death in the terrorist nations. Our Commander-In-Chief must decide whether it is his duty to save Americans or the governments who conspire to kill them.”
For the first time in over 50 years, America’s president appears ready to make the rational and historic choice to end the world’s worst sponsor of terrorism and make America safe again.
