Iran: Scalpel and Hammer
With brilliant intelligence and close U.S. and Israeli cooperation and coordination, Operation Epic fury is systematically dismantling the terrorist regime of Iran’s ayatollahs... It has also demolished fears of Russian and Chinese intervention on behalf of the regime... Indeed China, which depended on Iran and Venezuelan oil, is unlikely to make good for a while if ever on its threats to occupy Taiwan.
A quick reminder of Iran’s anti-U.S. aggression in recent decades: It took over our embassy and held 52 Americans there hostage for over a year; it bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American troops, its IEDs killed 603 and maimed hundreds more American service members in Iraq, it supplied its terrorist proxies who attack U.S. forces and shipping, it brutally tortured CIA’s Bill Buckley for 15 months, filming his agonies and sending the film to us...
Saggezza Eterna accurately describes our weak responses to these aggressions:
For years, the Democratic establishment operated on a delusional premise that a rogue regime could be bribed into morality. They sent pallets of cash to a state that burns the American flag, yet they express feigned shock when that same regime funds the slaughter of innocents across the globe. Under President Trump, that charade is finished...
The most knowledgeable analysis I found is by Shanaka Anselm Perera, who describes the decapitation of Iran’s leaders and the destruction of institutional trust which follows.
They did not bomb Iran. They waited for Iran’s entire leadership to sit down in the same room and then they bombed Iran. Months of intelligence. Thousands of hours of surveillance and signal intercepts. One variable: the moment the Supreme Leader, the President, and senior military command gathered in a single location at the same time...
In attempting to retaliate against Israel and America, the IRGC fired missiles at six sovereign nations in a single morning. Not one of those nations attacked Iran... [snip] Iran just converted every neutral and semi-neutral state in the Gulf into a potential co-belligerent...
Related
The Iran Question Is All About China, by Zineb Riboua, 28 February 2026:
... In fact, Beijing has spent years and billions of dollars building Iran into a structural asset. Everything that follows in the Middle East flows from this fact... By striking Iran directly, the Trump administration is dismantling, whether by design or by consequence, a pillar of China’s regional architecture.
China buys around 90% of Iran’s crude exports at steep discounts. The shipments travel on a ghost fleet of tankers that switch off their transponders and relabel their cargo as Malaysian or Indonesian crude to circumvent American sanctions...
A freight rail corridor now connects the Iranian city of Qom to Yiwu, China...
Huawei and ZTE have built significant portions of Iran’s telecommunications infrastructure. As far back as 2010, ZTE signed a $130 million contract to overlay a surveillance system onto Iran’s state-managed telephone and internet networks. Huawei and ZTE have built significant portions of Iran’s telecommunications infrastructure. As far back as 2010, ZTE signed a $130 million contract to overlay a surveillance system onto Iran’s state-managed telephone and internet networks...
The orientation of the Middle East will determine whether the United States can prevail in the defining confrontation of this century: a Chinese move against Taiwan...
Trump’s masterful statement about the attack on Iran, by Andrea Widburg, American Thinker, 28 February 2026.
