"We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into."
—President Donald J. Trump, Jan. 20, 2025
Inauguration Day speeches often reflect an incoming president’s best vision and aspirations before settling into the D.C. swamp’s muck and the infinite conflicts and compromises which come with governance at the highest level.
The war caucus of D.C. is urging our president to turn away from his best instincts and drop bunker busters on Iran without delay.
Like all war talk, they will argue this all presents little risk to our nation or the Trump presidency.
Don’t take the bait Mr. President.
None of them will be there to accept responsibility on the other side.
Maybe they will make a nice "Mission Accomplished" banner for an aircraft carrier.
Six months into "his watch," the president’s actions reflect a faithfulness to his inaugural proclamation, that the Trump doctrine in international affairs would be a demilitarized foreign policy.
The global tinder box he inherited this second time at the Resolute Desk is far more dangerous than his first.
Worl War III is a real thing.
True to his instincts and aspirations to be a peacemaker and unifier, his field generals to defuse the time bomb were adorned in Armani and Brooks Brothers suits, not the Pentagon wool, gilded with medals and qualifications from forever wars.
Treasury and commerce secretaries Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, along with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, who is a negotiator, are at the tip of the spear; a spear wielded by Trump himself as the hands-on commander in chief.
We've seen the inaugural ambition come to life in a combination of tariffs, trade agreements, and a willingness to talk to adversaries like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
Of course, this brazen, 180-degree turn away from the globalist neocon strategy of adding money and weapons to the world’s hotspots without a stitch of strategy or diplomacy met with fierce resistance in the swamp and in the capitals of those who would call themselves trusted allies.
Really?
Perhaps the greatest visual of the angst wrought on the World Economic Forum (WEF) anointed children was the oval office presser with Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy which devolved into a wholly appropriate admonishment of an offended Ukrainian leader expectant of billions more and weapons which are no longer sitting on warehouse shelves.
NATO and EU leaders don’t like being lectured to, inclusive of Trump pointing out the sober reality that the only thing the west has to show for the hundreds of billions spent is over a million dead, one-third of the population fled, and trillions in infrastructure gone and no one will even talk with Vladimir Putin while the sanctions do more harm to Europeans than the Russians.
Despite Trump pushing to lead to a negotiated end of this dreadful war, the WEF children continue to undermine him, pushing Zelenskyy to fight on despite the battlefield realities indicating a course correction is required immediately.
Lawyers and judges will have to decide, maybe someday, if Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Dick Blumenthal, D-Conn., broke the Logan Act with their presence in Kiev to pronounce more American commitments ahead of presidential decisions from the Trump White House.
However, their presence on the eve of an 18-month operation to hit Russian bombers, out in the open because of an Obama brokered START treaty underscores that the swamp and its Uniparty has little interest in following the President’s demilitarized vision.
Even a young major fresh out of staff college would tell you hitting an enemy’s more important assets the day before negotiation is fraught with risk.
- The talks blew up in Ukraine’s face.
- Score one for the globalists and the neocons.
- Fast forward to today.
Israel is reaching the apex of the war we all knew was coming.
The Oct. 7, 2023, massacre set the path that would eventually lead to Tehran, whose proxies in Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have been largely vanquished.
Israel’s combination of direct action and clandestine operations has and continues to show their courage, innovation, and resilience in the face of an evil foe which toils every day to bring an end to the Jewish state.
In the runup to the first bombs dropping last Friday, the debate on how to end Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions between President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hardly opaque. The prime minister advocating for his people faithfully urged POTUS to support immediate action and with the U.S. military in the fight.
Trump, unconvinced that the timeline would not accommodate a final run at diplomacy pushed back. He set a 60-day budget for that effort.
Day 60. Friday June 13, 2025. Israel’s Operation Rising Lion commences.
The Iranians were caught off guard, expecting a sixth round of negotiations for the following Sunday.
They didn’t take the 60-day leash seriously or maybe thought the U.S. president meant "about" 60 days. Their complacency cost them dearly as the decapitation strike wiped out most of the military leadership of the country and key advisors.
At the time of this writing, the true condition of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is unknown.
We do know that he transferred national power to the IRGC (Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps) leader.
There is no need to remember the general’s name as there is a new one every few days as they are assassinated.
Things are not good for the regime, and they are getting worse by the hour.
Tremendous images and videos are getting out of Iran depicting women tossing their hijabs off in defiance and dancing in the streets while men audaciously burn down propaganda billboards with the face of the supreme leader all over them.
The people are inspired in a way not seen since evil took over in 1979.
As a group, the Iranian people themselves are a center of gravity to be nurtured and protected as the nuclear ambitions of the mullahs are literally vaporized.
Enter the Trump Doctrine.
Even with bombs flying and promotion rates of the Iranian general staff skyrocketing due to Israeli missiles taking out leader after leader, President Trump still put out the invitation to whoever was in charge of Iran to engage in discussions about ending the war.
The regime predictably said "never," but the threats and pushback were likely aimed more at the Iranian people on the edge of revolution rather than the administration expressing a willingness to get to provide a path to conflict resolution.
Over the weekend, Iran demonstrated that it was still a dangerous foe with hyper-sonic missiles getting right past Iron Dome into Israeli civilian targets.
President Trump departed the G7 Summit a day early to attend an emergency NSC meeting to discuss U.S. intelligence and weigh response options. The G7 leaders must have been mortified as they had likely tee'd up their requests for more money and weapons for Ukraine.
Despite the expected cries from the neocons in the congress and the Israelis who understandably would like to see American bunker busters employed, the question must be answered: Is that what’s required?
Israel is receiving American help in terms of enablers, logistics, and intelligence.
It's clear from the president’s social media posts that he was essential to the early Rising Lion successes by participating in the deception with calls for a next round of negotiations last Sunday.
The brilliant IDF and Mossad forces took it from there and are on a victorious path with little indication that the mullahs have any chance of turning the tide.
Without the intelligence the president has, it appears that the nuclear facilities in the damaged or buried states pose no immediate danger while this war goes through its paces.
If that is the case, what is the immediate need for American bombing missions to commence?
This writer is certain that the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and Defense Department have done a superior job in presenting what the expectations should be of our strategic forces against these facilities, and it is likely a very favorable assessment.
Our capabilities are not in question.
The second and third order effects of our combatant role should be.
Domestically, we know that the last four years of open borders has allowed for terror "sleeper" cells to embed themselves in our nation. Iran and its proxies are well represented in that dangerous mix that U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan works around-the-clock to rid us of.
President Trump's current position of keeping U.S. bombers sidelined serves as a deterrent to Iranian leaders who know well that an action on our soil will result in America going "all-in" on Iran.
If we take the lead from Israel in regime change with our forces, do these cells have "Dead Man’s Switch" type orders to activate on their own, once they see the end of Iran’s current and already failing leadership?
Israel has Gaza and the other proxies to deal with and is in a wartime posture.
We are not in the same position or mindset here . . . the public’s resilience is low.
On the global stage the stakes could not be higher and every move counts.
Hopefully the team at the NSC is making estimates about how capitals, friendly, adversarial, and neutral will change their calculus.
Will the Kremlin inner circle advisors pressure Putin to believe that the administration will shift to a militarized lead in its policies toward Russia?
- Will the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) filled with its own existential issues assess that the U.S. is using the Iran nuclear proliferation issue as a cover to eliminate a third of its oil supply?
- Will the Gulf states revoke their effusive support for the Trump doctrine seen just weeks ago?
It doesn’t matter what we think they should think.
It matters what they decide after.
A post-Iran strike will bring significant political risk here at home to the president’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda.
There will be shrieks that congress was not consulted (if they weren’t) and fresh demands for impeachment.
If the results from U.S. military operations bring home the perils underlined above, how friendly will that GOP Congress and the U.S. Senate be?
The neocons on both sides will be screaming on the Sunday news shows, "If he only acted earlier"or "well no one could have foreseen the outcomes" or the all time go to, "it is what it is."
Economically the world (not just the U.S.) which has spent itself into oblivion and a certain, coming liquidity crisis is at the cusp of calamity. A quick look at soaring bond yields will show a world in recession no matter what "irrational exuberance" manifests on day-to-day market trading, on Wall Street - or anywhere for that matter.
- Gold bars anyone?
- Does escalation and increasing the risk of World War III drive the pending financial crisis over the edge?
- How will we pay for more war, if that's the case?
Three Iranian aircraft, two from the Iranian presidential fleet flew to Oman on June 18 and potentially had Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on board.
If they were signaling a desire to negotiate, they may well have been too late.
Can we add time to the clock?
President Trump is demanding "unconditional surrender" and they may well want to give that to him. They will certainly get a better exile deal than Israel probably has in mind.
Perhaps it's time for President Trump to break away from his inaugural address ambition. Maybe the world is too dangerous a place and too far gone for diplomacy and negotiation to work.
At the end of the day there is no one to pass the buck to. It sits with our president who arguably has the toughest challenges, eclipsing those of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
If our leader decides that we must now commit American forces to battle and the time for debate has passed, then let this writer and retired warrior be the first to offer my full and utmost support for his leadership and the missions he guides us to undertake.
God protect President Trump and imbue him with the wisdom of Solomon.
Brig Gen (ret) Blaine Holt is a former Deputy Representative to NATO, lifetime member on the Council on Foreign Relations, tech entrepreneur and Newsmax Contributor. The views presented are those of the author and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, or its components. Read Gen. Holt's reports — More Here.