Iran: The Moment of Truth

This is a fight to the death: on one side, the survival of Trump’s second term; on the other, that of Tehran’s totalitarian mullah regime. And in between, a worried Europe—divided and powerless.

This showdown had been expected, or feared, for years. Now it is here.

For forty-seven years, a group of Shiite fanatics has controlled a great country, heir to a great civilization—Persia—and home to 90 million people. For forty-seven years, this bloody and corrupt regime has pursued domination of the Middle East: attempting to build an atomic bomb, amassing tens of thousands of drones and missiles (27 types, with ranges from 300 to 4,000 km), financing and arming terrorist proxies across the region, and routinely carrying out attacks and hostage-taking in the West. France has paid the price: around a hundred dead, hundreds wounded, and a dozen hostages.

For forty-seven years, too, the world has hesitated and backed away from the challenge. Europe tried to negotiate for thirteen years, without managing to halt the mullahs’ nuclear and ballistic programs. Nor did it succeed in restraining Assad’s Syria, Hamas, or Hezbollah, all protected by Tehran. And for forty-seven years, successive U.S. presidents—up to Trump—despite the humiliation of the 1979 embassy hostage crisis in Tehran, chose to avoid direct confrontation, leaving the dirty work to Israel.

October 7 changed everything—ironically beginning with the pogrom carried out by Hamas, Tehran’s loyal proxy. The proxies were eliminated or weakened by the IDF; Assad was overthrown; and Iran was severely struck during the Twelve-Day War in June 2025. But the regime survived—and so did its nuclear ambitions. On the domestic front, a majority of Iranians rose up against totalitarianism and economic collapse last January, at the cost of 40,000 deaths and as many summary convictions. Once again, the regime held…

Then, after yet another round of negotiations in Geneva in February, Trump ultimately chose war, in a tight alliance with Israel—without consulting anyone: neither Congress, nor his European or regional allies, and certainly not the UN. An extremely risky gamble: regimes are not overthrown by airstrikes alone.

Everything rested on a двой hope: that the regime itself would fracture under the battering of U.S.-Israeli strikes, and that the Iranian people would seize the opportunity to take power.

Yet despite two weeks of extremely heavy strikes across the country’s entire military system—after the immediate decapitation of both its theocratic and military leadership—the regime still stands. The population, terrorized by January’s massacres, remains in hiding. Worse, the regime has gone back on the offensive—militarily and, above all, politically—imposing its own kind of war: an asymmetric conflict based on deliberate horizontal escalation. Striking enemy bases across the region (11 Americans killed and 140 wounded; one French soldier killed and six wounded); literally setting the region ablaze, beginning with the Emirates and other Gulf monarchies; and, above all, holding the global economy hostage by halting oil and gas production and blocking their transport through the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Despite relentless U.S.-Israeli bombing, Tehran has managed to hit every Western base in the region: American, French, Italian (in Iraq), British (in Cyprus). All neighboring Arab countries have been struck—sometimes hundreds of times, as in the Emirates; even Azerbaijan and Turkey (the NATO base at Incirlik) have been targeted…

The moment of truth is approaching, because the nature of the war has changed.

The hoped-for knockout has turned into a war of attrition—one that can only lead to generalized chaos. And a war of attrition is unsustainable for the global economy as a whole. The emergency release of 400 million barrels by the International Energy Agency is, at best, a temporary patch—barely twenty days—to prevent an immediate price surge. Trump now finds himself trapped between the markets, a public to whom he had vowed not to enter another “endless war,” and a military campaign with no attainable objective: the enemy’s capitulation, without boots on the ground. Withdrawal—even if dressed up as a “victory,” as Trump does so well—is impossible, unless the United States is willing to forfeit all credibility in the region and beyond.

The mullahs understand this perfectly and are already announcing the next phase: an implacable revenge, both domestically and abroad; an acceleration of their nuclear and intercontinental missile programs; and the subjugation of their Gulf Arab neighbors. The icing on the cake: they intend to secure recognition of their rights (that is, enrichment—and thus the bomb), war reparations, and even security guarantees.

Thus the moment of truth has arrived: either Trump settles for having degraded most of Iran’s military potential and withdraws, disguising retreat as a supposed “military victory”—in which case he will leave behind a region in generalized chaos, with a terrorist Iranian regime still in place and more vengeful than ever… Or he continues the fight to eradicate the octopus, ideally with the support of European and Arab allies.

Will America and Europe rise to the challenge?

— Pierre Lellouche, March 13, 2026