Quit jabbering and do it.

Talking to Iran is worse than a waste of time; it's a weapon Iran uses to sew doubt in the U.S. while it makes ready to keep killing. Time for Trump to do the hard part.

Paul wrote his typically thoughtful and realistic take on whether and in what fashion we should attack Iran. As is often the case, I am less optimistic than he. In this instance, I am also more doubtful about Trump.

Paul concludes that the most likely outcome is that Trump will get fed up with negotiations and

…target missile launch sites, many of them mobile; supply depots; air defense systems; and the transportation networks used to move weapons. These targets are located all over Iran…[D]egrading the nuclear program wouldn’t require hitting them all, but surely it would require a significantly larger campaign than last year’s strikes on a small number of major facilities.

I agree with that. I have my doubts, though, that Trump is up to it. He’s had his negotiators, Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, talking (and talking and talking) to the Iranians since forever about a deal. Why? The problems with talking are obvious and legion, to wit, for starters (1) no one seems to know if the deal is supposed to include reining in Iran’s worldwide terror campaign in addition to its nuclear program; (2) our own negotiators can’t be trusted — Kushner is the son of a convicted felon and was instrumental in pushing through the dreadful First Step Act (more aptly known as the Jailbreak Act); and (3) most fundamentally, no deal worth the name is possible ab initio with a bunch that has spent more than 40 years proving to be world-class liars in addition to being killers.

Just how hard is this? The whole premise of a “deal” — any deal — is that the other side can be either trusted or effectively surveilled into keeping it. Neither is true of Iran. Its treachery is too well established even to talk about, and the prospect that the United States will have effective and enforced surveillance over the long term, when it is certain to be needed, is all but nonexistent. Is President Mamdani going to demand compliance? President AOC? President Brylcream? Kamala? Will even a President Vance effectively compel Iran to keep whatever guarantees it gives? What’s the evidence for that? And even if there were evidence supporting faith in the Administration’s most isolationist and least Israel-friendly member, is there enough evidence to take the gamble on a nuclear-armed Iran?

Jimmy Carter’s incompetence and cowardice gave the world nearly a half century of this menace. Virtually every tentacle of Jihadist terror since the 1970’s can be linked in some way to Carter’s giving Iran, once a staunch ally of the United States, to the Ayatollah.

It’s time to do what needs doing.

The Wall Street Journal set forth the outline of the case for acting decisively and now.

There are excellent reasons to take military action now against the weakened revolutionary regime, but Mr. Trump has never made a sustained case for doing so. In his State of the Union address, he offered a list of the regime’s depredations over the years. This included massacring “at least 32,000” protesters in January, sponsoring terrorism around the world, killing Americans in Iraq, and building a missile arsenal that threatens Europe, U.S. bases and eventually the U.S. homeland.

Oddly left unmentioned was Iran’s seizure of the American embassy and kidnapping of American diplomats in 1979, a wildly illegal (for those who pretend to care about international law) and humiliating act for which Iran has never paid a price.

Yet he also talks about doing a deal on nuclear weapons alone. Iran is restarting its nuclear program, Mr. Trump said Tuesday. “We haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” he added. But Iran says this all the time, and it’s been lying for 40 years. At other times Mr. Trump speaks of regime change, but without an argument for why this is in U.S. interests.

In this, the Journal is correct. Not only must Trump act, he must first explain to the electorate why decisive measures are needed and what the gruesome alternatives are if we continue to indulge the epicenter of Jihad. Trump is no one’s version of Ronald Reagan, but his SOTU address showed signs of an ability to make his case. Now is the time to step up.

Any attack carries risks. While U.S. air defenses are formidable, casualties cannot be ruled out when Iran returns fire. Iran is threatening to retaliate harder than it did in June, when it launched more than 500 ballistic missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel but was unable to do major damage or down any jets. Initial U.S. strikes probably can’t eliminate everything Iran could fire at U.S. forces in the region.

This is why I suggested, in a comment to Paul’s post, that we make clear to Iran that any retaliation will result in a bombardment comparable to the one that turned most of Germany into a cinder in 1945. The current bunch of Nazis is no better than the last one and has earned no better treatment.

The Journal then makes this key point:

But there are also risks to not striking now. The Tehran regime is weaker than it has been since it came to power in 1979. Israel has degraded its proxy armies. It is under extreme financial and economic pressure, and it is at war with its own people.

Waiting a year, as some in the Administration advise, would give the regime time to rebuild its proxies and rearm. The Financial Times reported this week on a secret €500 million Iran deal to buy advanced missiles from Russia. Reuters reports that Iran is nearing a deal with China to buy supersonic antiship missiles.

Waiting would squander a rare opportunity to topple a regime that has terrorized the world, spread war across the Middle East, supplied Russia and China, and killed or maimed thousands of Americans.

The Journal concludes:

Mr. Trump has put himself in a position where there is risk no matter what he decides. His way out is to explain why he thinks he must act now in Iran. If he asks for support in advance from Congress and the public, he will have more allies if the war doesn’t go exactly as planned, which it rarely does. The upside is a chance to weaken or topple a regime that promises “death to America,” and to give the Middle East a new chance for peace.

No civilized person thinks there is a “good” time for war. No normal person dismisses the costs it may impose on us, neither their scope nor their unpredictability. But no sane person thinks that determined evil will go away by itself.

For the United States, the time has arrived.