Mullahs Destroy U.S. Base! Nope, It’s Just ‘Persian Kabuki.’ Mayor’s Race: Chicago Tries to Warn New York. Missing Children. Why Third Country Deportations?
Who knew that the Iranian regime, coddled by the last two Democratic administrations, was a paper tiger?
In “Trump and the ’12 Day War,’” the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board marvels at the mullahs’ (fact check: are there enough mullahs left to make this plural?) feeble response to the U.S. airstrikes:
Iran fired 14 ballistic missiles at U.S. troops in Qatar on Monday, and in typical fashion claimed to have “destroyed the American air base” in retaliation for U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites. Here on Planet Earth, the base was already substantially evacuated and the missiles were intercepted with no casualties reported. All sides said Iran gave advance notice that the attacks were coming. The price of oil fell.
This was Persian Kabuki theater, and it would be laughable if real missiles weren’t aimed at Americans. It’s also no small matter to fire on Qatar, the friendliest state to Iran in the region, or at U.S. Central Command’s regional headquarters. But as a show of Iranian power or resolve, the attack failed. President Trump mocked it as “a very weak response,” adding that Iran had “gotten it all out of their ‘system.’”
President Trump announced a CEASEFIRE between Israel and Iran on Truth Social. The president wisely avoided a “mission accomplished” moment of the sort that came back to haunt former President George W. Bush. The ceasefire is fragile. Israel accused Iran of breaking it and threatened a resumption of bombing. But is Iran even up to continuing the fight? As Ruel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh suggest in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Past American triumphs were short-lived, but this time retaliation will be more difficult for Tehran.”
In a similar vein, the headline on Jay Solomon’s lead story at The Free Press is “Ceasefire or Not, Iran Looks for Ways to Reduce Risk of a U.S. Reprisal.” The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker, hardly a fan of President Trump, finds the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities “pragmatic and judicious”:
Iran has been in a direct and proxy war with us for years. The near-impunity with which the regime in Tehran has been able to kill Americans in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere has been a dangerous demonstration of American weakness.
Most important, most of the retaliatory capabilities Iran has nurtured as a deterrent to any attack against it have been neutralized or compromised by Israel’s astonishingly brave and successful operations in the war that—remember this—Iran’s proxies launched against it on Oct. 7, 2023. Far from America now going to war at Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand, as some in the MAGA crowd say, the U.S. is entering a fight in our national interest in which our ally has already done almost all the heavy lifting and made almost all the sacrifices.
Again, those who worry about this intervention have recent history and wisdom on their side. No one should blithely assume it is anything more than an important step in a longer struggle. But Mr. Trump’s decision to act now was judicious and pragmatic and looks less risky than the alternative.
Rich Lowry is more direct. “President Badass” is his headline. National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar writes a piece headlined “Trump’s Iran Strike Shows Precisely Why Elections Matter.” Without Trump, the strikes would not have happened. Here is a thought experiment: Vice President J.D. Vance left the White House to appear on Fox’s Special Report as the Trump-brokered ceasefire was coming together. He did a masterful job of explaining it to anchor Brett Baier. Imagine Vice President Kamala Harris or a Vice President Tim Walz accomplishing that feat.
Berkeley law professor John Yoo was also pretty masterful in explaining why the air strikes are constitutional. Proof that Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries has caller ID: The White House says it gave bipartisan heads-ups to members of Congress, but couldn’t reach several, including Jeffries, who apparently did not pick up. Matthew Continetti writes that on the most consequential foreign policy decision of recent years, the Dems have gone AWOL. Powerline’s Scott Johnson suggests that Tucker Carlson, who tweeted that talk show host Mark Levin was at the White House “lobbying war with Iran,” “though [Levin] has no plans to fight in this or any war,” owes Levin an apology.
New York business leaders are “shaking over the prospect of socialist Zohran Mamdani emerging as New York’s next Mayor in today’s primary. The New York Post reports:
Frightened movers and shakers said that a Mayor Mamdani would be “disastrous” for New York City — with some loath to speak out publicly for fear of ticking off progressives and galvanizing the Queens assemblyman’s lefty, anti-business base.
“It would be disastrous for the city,” said startup entrepreneur John Borthwick — who recently met the surging candidate during a Partnership For New York City meeting.
Mamdani’s surge in the polls has been driven by his unabashedly socialist, freebie-heavy platform promising free buses, city-run grocery stores and higher taxes on the rich.
But many business leaders such as billionaire John Catsimatidis — who threatened to close his Manhattan-based grocery chain Gristedes if Mamdani wins — have claimed that the Democratic socialist’s proposals will lead to an exodus from the city.
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo appears to remain on top in polls as published by the New York Times. (FYI: Ms. Must makes an effort to use stuff from the New York Times, but the scrappy New York Post is just plain better.) Lesser-known Mamdani proposals have hefty price tags. Mamdani proposes a $65 million budget for transgender “medical treatments.” The Chicago Tribune sent New Yorkers a stark warning about what can happen when a city elects a socialist Mayor. “The ending isn’t pretty,” New Yorkers were warned. The Tribune warning relied on the Windy City’s experiences with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. On top of all this, The Times of London (via Powerline, where you can read a copy behind The Times paywall) reveals that Mamdani is a nepo baby and poster boy for luxury beliefs:
Before being elected to the New York state assembly in 2020, Mamdani only managed to string together three years of employment. This includes a short-lived rap career and a spell on a film project for his mother, Mira Nair, the director of Monsoon Wedding. He has even joked: “You know, nepotism and hard work goes a long way.”
Dozens of missing children have been rescued from child traffickers in a Florida effort dubbed Operation Dragon Eye and led by the U.S. Marshall’s office in central Florida and the State AG. Fox Digital has the details:
Authorities said the recovered children ranged in age from 9 to 17, and many of them were missing and at risk of being exploited. The U.S. Marshals Service defines “critically missing” children as “those at risk of crimes of violence or those with other elevated risk factors such as substance abuse, sexual exploitation, crime exposure or domestic violence.”
The operation uncovered the gut-wrenching realities of sex trafficking — including several young girls who were pregnant, one of them carrying the child of her trafficker.
I’d like to know more about how these children went missing. How many of them were “lost” by a “Biden” administration eager to make the biggest illegal immigration mess possible in the time allotted? Do you remember the curious outrage the Left unleashed against the movie “Sound of Freedom” because it exposed child trafficking?
The U.S. Supreme Court has handed the Trump administration a big win: In a 6-3 ruling, the Court upheld the Trump administration’s right to deport illegal aliens to a third country not of their choice. This is a pause in a previous judge’s ruling. The reason the charmers can’t be deported to their own countries is that they have such violent histories that their fraidy cat native lands refuse to take them. Chris Queen of PJ Media has an excellent breakdown of the issue. A bad guy sneaks into the U.S., doesn’t behave himself, and ends up in … Sudan.
Makes perfect sense to me.
