Delusional Mullahs & the Stakes in Iran. Dancing Frogs and F-word Part of Dem Arsenal. The Dream That Will Not Die: NYT Pushes Unverified Trump Smear in Epstein Files. More

President Trump faces a legacy defining decision: whether to strike Iran. The U.S. and the Islamic regime are engaging in indirect talks in Geneva. “We just need action,” say desperate Iranians back home.

A Wall Street Journal editorial is headlined “Trump and the Stakes in Iran.”  The editorial argues that, while there are reasons to strike Iran, the President has not made the case yet:

This failure is creating uncertainty even inside his Administration. Media reports Monday said that Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is worried about the risks of striking Iran. Our sources say those stories are accurate, and the leaks suggest an effort by doubters inside the Administration to deter Mr. Trump more than Iran.

We’re also told that as of Tuesday the head of Central Command, Adm. Brad Cooper, hadn’t briefed Mr. Trump on the war plan he’s put together for Iran. The plan calls for an extensive attack on a host of Iranian regime and military targets, which is consistent with the armada Mr. Trump has assembled in the region.

Some inside the administration are proposing a delay. The Editors, however, caution against that idea:

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.

Waiting would also damage Mr. Trump’s credibility. He told the Iranian public in January that “help is on its way,” and he didn’t say help would only arrive after the U.S. election. If he now settles for nuclear promises or symbolic strikes after having amassed so much force, Moscow and Beijing will notice. An honorable peace in Ukraine becomes harder.

There is heightened anxiety in Israel, where hospitals are conducting emergency drills and citizens are obtaining list of locations of bomb shelters. Quotable pro-attack Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says that Iran is facing its “Berlin Wall moment.” Daniel Pletka has a really magnificent piece on the Iran decision in National Review this morning.

Pletka writes that President Trump is baffled as to why Iran, facing regime annihilation by the U.S., doesn’t want to give up its nuclear ambitions:

Foreign leaders like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current supreme leader, don’t just dress differently and speak different languages. They live in a different reality. In their reality, Iran is a formidable power that killed scores of Americans with a strike on Iraq in 2020, downed Israeli F-35s, and killed hundreds of Israel Defense Forces troops in its 2025 strikes on Israel. Of course, these things didn’t happen, but Iran’s senior-most leaders nevertheless believe they did.

Liberation Delayed. Cuban nationals living in the United States were prevented from “infiltrating” the communist island in their Florida-registered speedboat. The Cuban government says that the people in the speedboat fired first. Cuban border agents killed four. The brother of one of the men killed described his brother, a truck driver, as pursuing an “obsessive and diabolical quest” for Cuba’s freedom. Call me crazy, but I don’t see how wanting to free Cuba could be termed “diabolical.”

“The State of the Union Is Belligerent” is Wall Street Journal politics columnist Karl Rove’s headline this morning. Rove writes:

Throughout his record number of guest introductions, the president was empathetic and personable. His remarks, delivered as written, were often moving, patriotic and unifying.

This was also the most partisan State of the Union in memory. In what may have been a first, Mr. Trump attacked his predecessor by name several times. He repeatedly condemned congressional Democrats, tried to force them to stand and applaud him, and lacerated them when they didn’t. He was spoiling for a fight.

Polling dials indicate that one of the most popular moments in the SOTU, even for Democrats, was when the President called for a ban on insider stock trading for members of Congress, calling renowned stock picker Nancy Pelosi by name.

Who Doesn’t Love a Green Frog? But let’s admit—the Dems were memorable too. “Dems Ditched American Heroes for Adults in Frog Suits and Tiresome De Niro — All we can do is Pity Them” is the headline on  Kirsten Fleming’s enjoyable piece.

[S]ome of our nation’s lawmakers chose to hang with wack jobs in inflatable frog costumes at a “State of the Swamp” event in DC, organized by the Anti-Trump organization Defiance.org.

“Tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland Frog Brigade,” Rep. Maxine Dexter of Oregon said to the audience proudly sporting Kermit’s cousins on their heads.

“We answered with frog costumes, dancing, singing and joy when Trump wanted us to cower in fear,” she said crediting her amphibian army with keeping the National Guard out of their city.

I beg you: Do not under any circumstances miss the dancing frog pictures.

Miranda Devine writes that the Dems revealed their stance on illegal immigration and their true colors by refusing to stand during the SOTU. Lowered standards of civility are bipartisan, but the Democrats’ shocking embrace of the f-word takes it to a new level of vulgarity. Jonathan Turley has a worthy piece on Democrats’ obscenity-larded race to the bottom.

Another great Barton Swaim article. “Vance, Newsom and Tales of Want” argues that politicians who romanticize economic hardships of growing up (some more plausibly than others) don’t others to experience the hard knocks that shaped them:

The vice president fervently supports expanding almost any redistributionist program said to benefit the working class. Maybe if Mr. Vance’s ideas had obtained 30 years ago, the American economy would have shown more generosity to the working class, Mamaw would have enjoyed an income in keeping with her moral worth, and she would have had no trouble buying that calculator. But in that case, Mamaw would have had to make no sacrifice and there would have been no “Hillbilly Elegy” and thus no Vice President Vance.

Did Richard Nixon get done in by the deep state? It is an intriguing idea explored by Christopher Caldwell at the London Spectator. Unfortunately, behind the pay wall, so only lucky subscribers can get it. 

There are some other pieces I want to recommend: City Journal’s article saying that New Yorkers don’t know how much they spend on public education (more than any other state with abysmal results). … A Wall Street Journal editorial to the effect that vaccine skeptic Dr. Casey Means, who has been nominated for Surgeon General, is not the best person to restore credibility to the Department of Health and Human Services. … An editorial at the same esteemed publication predicting that the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is about to bite.

It is an article of faith among TDS sufferers that someday, if they just keep pushing hard, something. Somewhere in the Epstein documents will destroy Donald Trump. The New York Times, in that spirit of hope, has a story claiming that the released DOJ files included a brief mention of a woman’s unverified accusation that Trump assaulted her in the 1980s, when she was a minor. But several memos related to her account are not in the files. 

Breitbart focuses on the unverified nature of the accusation (not that others have not been ruined by unverified material in the Epstein material). The white whale for Republicans is the Clintons. Wily Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to be deposed on the Epstein matter in behind closed doors at her Chappaqua residence. Raise your hand if you think this will be a fruitful endeavor.