Tag Archive for: radical Islam

EXCLUSIVE: Islamification Becomes Public Enemy No. 1

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., told the Daily Signal that a recent campaign poll of his found many of his constituents view the rise of “Islamification” and Islamic rule as a top concern.

As stated by Fine, respondents prioritized the issue above topics such as abortion, health care, and the conflict involving Iran.

“I had to fight with my pollster, because no one ever asks about the rise of radical Islam in America, and I wanted it placed in my survey,” Fine said. “It was one of the largest issues people rated. My constituents believe it concerned them more than the war in Iran, abortion, and more.”

Separately, he referenced remarks by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, claiming the mayor had expressed sympathy for a Hamas sniper. The mayor in February also called for a broader acceptance of the “Prophet Mohammed” on Islamic migration.

“Look, the history of Islam is one of conquest,” Fine said, describing why he believes the issue resonates with certain voters.

Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told the Daily Signal that concerns raised by Fine are among the reasons he co-founded the Sharia-Free America Caucus. Self said the group aims to educate lawmakers and the public about what he described as the risks of Sharia law.

“We are educating ourselves, our constituents, and our wider audience,” Self said. “We believe in the values of this country, [and] we believe in capitalism and our Christian foundations. We are a very forgiving country.”

Self argued that without continued focus on the issue, the perceived threat could grow.

“[We see] the rape gangs uncovered in the U.K., killing your daughter because she dishonored the family, and more,” Self said. “We do not want that to come to America.”

A recent report from Rupert Lowe MP noted that at least 250,000 Christian white girls in the United Kingdom have been raped in the 21st century, 83% of whom have been victims of Islamic rape gangs. According to testimonies outlined in the report, the survivors revealed that their rapists believed they had a religious duty to conduct the act.

“Our efforts will continue,” Self added. “We continue to grow slowly. We will have a planning session soon to outline what we think we can encourage governors to do—things we will recommend to governors and states to ask for their help, because they can do more than us in most cases.”

States like Texas and Florida have taken initiatives that the federal government has failed to take, such as designating the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a terrorist organization for its controversial financial trail and involvement in advocating for Sharia.

States like Indiana could soon follow, Indiana state Rep. Andrew Ireland told the Daily Signal.

Self also said he believes some individuals exploit constitutional protections to avoid scrutiny.

“If awareness on this issue is not raised, both by voters and by politicians, radical Islamists will continue to hide behind this freedom of religion, freedom of speech curtain,” he said.

“That is to be expected. They are going to go on the offensive because they think they got the upper hand,” Self added.

He concluded that the issue is “more important than ever,” asserting that the threat “is spreading right now.”

“The videos of Imams openly preaching treason are gaining traction,” Self said. “They are on the offensive, make no mistake about it.”

AUTHOR

Pedro Rodriguez 

Pedro Boccalato Rodriguez-Aparicio is a journalism fellow at the Daily Signal. Follow on X pedrobrodrigue7.

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘ASK MERCY OF GOD’: Republicans Slam Dems Over Endorsement of Leftist Group Under Federal Indictment

Communists and Jihadists Won in NYC Because No One Voted

Texas proposes change to high school social studies curriculum to teach about ‘Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns’

RELATED VIDEO: Anni Cyrus: “I’m Willing to Die To Stop Islam From Taking Over America.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Occupied Britain: Muslim Rape Gang Report Warns against Dangers of Mass Immigration (Part 2)

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

This is the second part in a series. You can read Part 1 here.

Warning: The following article contains references to the sexual abuse, rape, and torture of children. While every effort has been made to avoid unnecessary and gratuitous details, several instances of the reported violence have been included for the purpose of exposing the threat posed by mass immigration from Muslim majority regions and the failure to correctly identify, acknowledge, and adequately address that threat. Reader discretion is advised.

As Chloe’s story evinces, the vast majority of British institutions — from police and prosecutors to social care and health care workers — routinely, regularly, repeatedly failed to protect British girls from the widespread abuse committed by Muslim rape gangs. One girl reported that she was placed in a foster home with Pakistani Muslims, where she was abused and raped. When she became pregnant by rape at the age of 15, her child was removed from the house by social services, but she was made to remain. That same girl testified that her abusers would wait outside social services meetings to pick her up and would even phone social care workers to check on her whereabouts.

When one social care worker suggested noting the license plates of the abusers waiting outside, she was told by her boss that doing so was “above her pay grade” and that she would likely lose her job if she did so. The girl shared her belief that “the staff were aware of what was happening but felt powerless to stop it rather than being actively complicit.” Unlike in Chloe’s case, this girl reported that police repeatedly warned Muslim men to stay away from her but did little beyond issue warnings. She stated that “the greatest harm came not only from the abusers but from institutional disbelief, neglect, and punishment that actively enabled the ongoing exploitation.”

Another girl shared that she was gang-raped by three Muslim men who also beat her and left her locked alone in a room. Her friend and her friend’s mother were alarmed by her cuts and bruises and called the police. After the girl told the police what happened, they said that there was nothing they could do. She was later taken by one of her rapists to the police station to retract her statement. “The police accepted him as her ‘appropriate adult’ — a role normally reserved for a parent, close family member, social worker, or trained professional. The investigation was subsequently dropped.”

When Muslim rape gang members would pick up girls from social services meetings, social care workers would phone the police, who never intervened, instead referring to the rape victims as “prostitutes.” The girl said that “these gangs have remained untouchable because authorities feared being labelled racist.” She said that she was raped by between 600 and 700 men and that “98% of them were Pakistani Muslim,” while the rest “were Iraqi Muslim or Kurdish.”

One woman, who was gang-raped by Pakistani Muslims herself when she was a teenager, later reported her daughter missing multiple times, sharing her concerns that Muslim boys and men were sexually abusing the child. “Police responses were often delayed, statements were not taken, and investigations were closed without further action. Social services refused to relocate the family, downgraded the risk level, and eventually closed the case despite ongoing exploitation.” The woman’s family was threatened by Muslims for reporting her daughter’s sexual abuse, with Muslims threatening to burn her house down or kill her and her family using machetes. When her daughter reported a “sex room” at school where older boys would systematically sexually abuse and rape girls, the woman called school authorities, who refused to investigate and claimed that the woman’s daughter was lying.

One girl was even charged with nine counts of “perverting the course of justice” and sentenced to eight years in prison for reporting the abuse she suffered from Muslim rape gangs. In one instance, the girl reported that she had been raped by a Muslim man who was later arrested and convicted for breaking into a home and sexually assaulting the woman who lived there. Prosecutors still argued that the girl was lying. After reporting that she had been threatened by her abusers, who said that they would kill her brother and rape her sister, the girl was found lying in a field, covered in cuts and bruises and missing a finger. “Following this, she wrote a post on Facebook alleging that she had been a victim of grooming gangs. The post went viral,” the Inquiry recounted. “Within half an hour, the police arrested her and she was sent to prison.”

A man, called “Marlon” in the report, repeatedly raised concerns to police and social services that his 14-year-old daughter was being groomed and sexually abused. While the police urged social services to intervene, social services instead took months to conduct an investigation, eventually telling Marlon’s daughter, who was frequently reported missing, that she could leave the house any time she wanted to and instructing her to call social services if her father tried to keep her home. “Social services undermining his parental authority resulted in her missing episodes escalating dramatically. Social services effectively gave her permission to go missing, and the case was then closed without meaningful intervention.”

Although Marlon would often be out late at night, driving around until four in the morning looking for his missing daughter, police repeatedly dismissed his concerns, often failing to show up at his house for hours after he registered a missing persons complaint. Even when masked men attacked Marlon in his home, after threatening him not to report his daughter missing, the police response was “delayed and dismissive.” Social services even tried to blame Marlon for his daughter’s abductions, abuse, and rape in court, until a judge intervened and determined that what happened to the girl was beyond Marlon’s control.

One girl, after reporting her abuse — repeated rape and gang rape, often filmed — to the police, was pressured by the police to retract her statement and say that she was lying. “She was warned that if any part of her account could not be supported by evidence, she could and would be arrested,” the Inquiry recounted. “For an extended period of time, both officers repeatedly told her how much trouble she would be in if any detail of her statement was disproved, and that she could withdraw the allegation before the interview started with no further consequences. They also suggested that her parents would be relieved if she said the incident had not happened.” The girl was 12 at the time.

When the girl’s parents found sexually explicit test messages on her phone, including photos, they reported it to the police, who dismissed the sexual conversations with adult men as “consensual.” The girl reported that her abusers would traffic her to police officers, in addition to other Muslim men. When she shared her diary with a social care worker, detailing years of rape, sex trafficking, and torture, she was not believed, and the social care worker diagnosed her with dissociative personality disorder. Her abusers told her that they knew when she was “snitching” to the police because “they had people on the inside.”

One girl was forced into a Sharia marriage at the age of 15. “Her social worker attended the marriage ceremony.” In most cases, institutional forces failed or refused to act for fear of being labeled racist or, particularly in the case of the Labour Party, for fear of offending and alienating the Muslim voting bloc. “I don’t think that they care much about us,” one victim said of authorities. “They didn’t want to open that can of worms, because it’s a religion thing.”

Institutional failures were not limited to allowing the continued rape and abuse of victims but extended to the punishment and retaliation against whistleblowers. One social care worker who raised concerns was told that an investigation would soon be launched but later found that investigators had purchased shredders and destroyed evidence. One whistleblower, Caven Vines, compiled records demonstrating that public authorities, including police, local council members, and even MPs were aware of the Muslim rape gang epidemic as early as 2003. He alleges that several MPs have perjured themselves in Parliament in an effort to cover up the abuse and cover up their own knowledge of it. Vines has since been sued into bankruptcy. Other whistleblowers include men who have helped law enforcement track down and identify Muslim rape gang members like activist Tommy Robinson, who has repeatedly been maligned and targeted by the British state and media as a “far-right extremist.”

‘The Religion of Peace’

According to the Rape Gang Inquiry Report, at least 87% and as many as 95% of the men involved in the rape gangs are Muslim, primarily of Pakistani ethnicity, but also of Indian, Somali, Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi, Turkish, and African heritage. “They operated under an honour and shame clan code that treated non-Muslim girls, especially white working-class girls, as property available for sexual use because these girls had no male protectors who could retaliate,” the Inquiry stated. White and Christian girls were regularly referred to as “trash,” “white trash,” and other racial epithets. “The same networks targeted Sikh girls until Sikh communities mobilised collective male protection and forced the gangs to withdraw,” the Inquiry noted. “British girls were not permitted such a defence. This religiously framed exploitation was repeated in every major town and city and beyond.”

One victim reported that she was “repeatedly subject to racially and religiously motivated” abuse and violence. She said that “being white was repeatedly used as a justification for the abuse or to minimise or dismiss the harm being inflicted.” The girl was raised in a Christian household and was repeatedly mocked and degraded for her Christian faith. She wore a small cross on her neck and was ridiculed while being raped for her Christian faith, with her rapists telling her that “her Christian faith offered her no protection” and that “her God had abandoned her” or “would reject me because of what had been done to me.” The Inquiry noted, “Comments were constantly made suggesting that white girls and Christian girls were viewed as having degraded moral character or lower value, whereas Muslim girls were described by some of the men as having dignity and higher moral standing.”

Another victim reported that she had been repeatedly taken to mosques, where she heard imams preach about the inferiority of white people and “infidels,” chiefly Christians, and encouraged Muslim men to sexually abuse white and Christian girls, labeling them inferior to Muslim women. One woman who was subjected to repeated rape by Muslim rape gangs said that she “was explicitly told during the rapes that the attacks were happening because she was white and because she was Christian.” She was referred to repeatedly as a “white slag,” a “white whore,” and a “white c***.” She recounted, “I was told that Muslim girls are good and pure, and stay virgins until marriage, but all white girls are slags, and they all sleep with hundreds of people. I was told white girls are trash. They are all whores. They are lower than sh** under your shoe. They don’t obey Allah, so they deserve to be punished. … They should be raped as punishment for not obeying Allah.”

“I was beaten, strangled, suffocated, and my head held under water, tortured, kicked, and raped over 100 times. I was told that if you don’t scream when you’re raped, then you’re consenting to the rape, so you should be stoned to death,” the woman recalled. “All of the sexual abuse that I experienced was linked to spiritual abuse or religious abuse. Religious scriptures were used as tools of control to force me to conform to their will. I was not allowed to question these religious beliefs,” she continued. “They used their religious ‘moral authority’ and self-proclaimed elitism to control me through use of scripture, forced confessions, censorship of decision making, requirement of secrecy and silence, isolation, excessive shaming and punishment around sexuality, and requiring unquestioning obedience.”

One girl who was raped and took her rapists to trial was verbally assaulted by her rapists’ sister, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” at her. Another girl reported, “Before they raped me, they would chant, ‘Bismillah Hir Rahman Nir Rahim,’” which translates to, “In the name of Allah, the most gracious and most merciful.” Yet another girl said that she knew several Muslim girls, who were sometimes present when she was being sexually assaulted or raped, but that the Muslim men treated the Muslim girls with a higher degree of respect. “They have no compassion,” one girl said. “‘English pig dogs’ came up a lot,” she said of the names her Muslim rapists would call her and other white or Christian girls. “Muslims don’t like pigs and they don’t like dogs. So they hate dogs, they hate pigs,” and they place white and Christian girls “on the same level as that.”

“Britain is not a unique case. This sort of thing goes on anywhere that either welcomes mass migration from Muslim countries or contains long-established Muslim populations,” the Inquiry noted. “There is a consistent pattern of sexual violence directed against non-Muslim minorities in settings where Muslims form the majority.”

Hail the Victor

The publication of the Rape Gang Inquiry Report comes in the midst of international debate on the issue of mass immigration. Many in politics, public policy, academia, and media have pointed to terrorist acts and mass murders committed in the name of Allah or “jihad,” the Muslim concept of a “holy war” against the Western world, as evidence that mass immigration from Muslim majority countries poses an existential threat to the social, moral, legal, and cultural fabric of Western nations, like the U.K. or the U.S.

Under traditional Islamic jurisprudence, the term “hijrah” refers to conquest via immigration, effectively inundating a non-Muslim country so completely with Muslim immigration that Muslims can subsequently undermine, topple, and eventually replace all major institutions and subjugate the nation to Islam. “Islamic jurisprudence also addresses the treatment of non-Muslim populations conquered through jihad,” the Inquiry observed in its report. Islam differentiates between infidels living in Muslim-dominated territories, who are largely considered “safe” from jihad provided certain obligations are fulfilled, and infidels who live in non-Muslim territories, who are fair game for violence, warfare, subjugation, conquest, and eventual enslavement. The Inquiry affirmed that the crimes perpetrated by the Muslim rape gangs “are not isolated instances of criminality, but stem from imported pre-modern clan systems embedded within certain ethno-cultural communities, reinforced by specifically Islamic collectivism.”

The Inquiry labeled the pervasive, endemic nature of the Muslim rape gangs and the timid deference shown to the Muslim rapists by law enforcement, social services, and health care workers as evidence of the gradual Islamization of Britain. However, the political class capitalized on the Islamization of the country, simultaneously furthering it and attempting to curry favor with the Muslim invaders. “The country’s transformation was greatly accelerated under Tony Blair’s New Labour project, which culminated in the Equality Act 2010,” the Inquiry noted. The legislation strengthened so-called “protections” for particular characteristics, particularly demonizing “Islamophobia.”

Many of the police officers, social care workers, health care workers, and school officials interviewed by the Inquiry admitted that they did not report or take action against the mass rapes due to fears of being labeled racist or Islamophobic, and in some cases fearing race riots. “The result was a chilling effect across public institutions. Police forces, social services, and local councils repeatedly chose silence or denial over robust investigation because the political and professional costs of appearing to single out Muslims was deemed too high.”

“What went wrong is now painfully clear. The post war liberal consensus … emphasised diversity, inclusion, and non-judgementalism as supreme virtues. Multiculturalism replaced national self-confidence as the guiding principle,” the Inquiry concluded. “Long-standing British norms around free speech, child protection, and impartial application of the law were subordinated to the need to avoid offending minority sensitivities at all costs. Liberal elites in media, politics, and the public sector internalised the idea that acknowledging cultural or religious factors in crime was itself a form of bigotry,” it continued. “This mindset actively shielded the rape gangs by discouraging the very inquiries and interventions that could have saved thousands of children.”

Muslim immigration into the U.S. poses a similar threat. Already, areas like Texas and Michigan have seen significant increases in their states’ Muslim populations, including the formation of ethnic Muslim enclaves and the rapid increase of mosques. While some American legislators and law enforcement officials are sounding the alarm over the rise of the practice of sharia law, the U.K.’s tragic Rape Gang Inquiry stands as a stark, brutal warning: if it is happening in the U.K. on such an enormous scale, then there is a good chance that it is happening in the U.S. on a smaller scale.

In fact, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed recently that federal law enforcement agents have already found similar-style rape gangs. “We have one group that we broke up that these young ladies are claiming they were raped 600 to 700 times, and these are teenage girls now,” Mullin shared, making clear that the victims were children when raped. “We have one that we just broke up recently that was a ring of people that had kept these kids down in a tunnel. You couldn’t write a horror story about how bad this was, couldn’t write a horror story. It’s stuff that I’ll never forget.”

As Britain demonstrates again, whatever smaller scale rape gangs may be operating in the U.S., it will not stay small for very long, and talk of sharia law courts will pale in comparison to the mass rape of hundreds of thousands of American girls if Muslim immigration is not addressed seriously.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Latest Skirmish Demonstrates Why Iran Is Still the Bad Guy

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Nearly a month after President Trump informed Congress that the Iran war is “terminated,” the belligerents continue to routinely trade fire in the Persian Gulf, as Iran refuses to abide by the ceasefire. The latest exchange of fire came Tuesday, resulting in one death and dozens of injuries after an Iranian missile struck civilian infrastructure in a country not at war with it. Iran is clearly the “bad guy,” but the breathless denunciations so freely hurled at the first insinuation of Israeli misconduct are strangely absent on the Left.

The skirmish began with Iran firing one-way attack drones at civilian shipping in the Persian Gulf. U.S. Central Command shot down three of the drones and responded with strikes on Iranian ground control stations on Qeshm Island.

After that, Iran launched a volley of projectiles toward Bahrain, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet. Bahrain’s air defenses “intercepted and destroyed three missiles and a number of drones,” with no damage resulting.

Iran also launched a volley toward Kuwait, where the U.S. operates several military bases. Two missiles failed to reach their targets, and some were intercepted, but Kuwait had to deal with a total of 13 missiles and 17 drones.

One missile that was not intercepted crashed into Kuwait’s international airport at dawn, causing “severe material damage” and suspending air traffic. Clearly, the missile was not aimed at a U.S. military base, which would have been a legitimate military target. The Iranian attack killed one Indian national and injured 63 other people in the airport. It sounds like an open-and-shut war crime — or at least it would be, for anyone named “Israel.”

For their part, Iran pointed fingers at the U.S. Earlier on Tuesday, an American aircraft fired a missile into the engine room of a sanctioned oil tanker trying to run the U.S. blockade and reach Iran’s Kharg Island, its oil export hub. Iran claimed that it launched drones at ships in the Persian Gulf in response to this incident, and that it launched missile barrages at Bahrain and Kuwait in response to America’s retaliatory strikes.

By even issuing such an explanation, Iran continues to insult the world’s intelligence by insisting that they fall for a patent lie. Seizing or disabling ships that try to run a blockade is a basic function of maintaining a naval blockade. If there were no hazard to venturing past the U.S. Navy, then the presence of its ships would not slow traffic, and if it never made good on its threats to use force against ships that tried to slip past, then the threat of force would lose its effect.

Iran understands how this game is played. In fact, it previously blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, creating a precedent to justify America’s action. The entry to the Persian Gulf is like a high-stakes version of the playground game “sharks and minnows.” The shadowy fleet of ships aligned with Iran wants to slip past the powerful American sharks, but they understand that anyone who gets tagged in the attempt must be considered “out.”

Of course, in such a playground game, it would be entirely inappropriate for a child who was tagged out to stamp off in a huff and “retaliate” against the kid who tagged him by punching the tagger’s little sister in the face. It would be even more bizarre if he stamped off and punched some random little girl in the face and claimed that it was in retaliation. Such a child would face severe consequences, parents would be involved, and charges might even be filed. Certainly, a cloud would hang over his participation in future games.

Yet this is what Iran did Tuesday — and what it has done repeatedly and consistently since February 28. Iran’s war is with the U.S. and Israel. Yet it has fired the majority of its projectiles at defenseless shipping from unrelated nations and neutral Arab countries around the region. These are — and continued to be — unjustified acts of war, naked aggression.

The sovereign state of Iran immediately resorted to the mewling tactics of a lowly terror group — like the network of terror groups it funds. Instead of playing by the rules everyone agrees to, Iran simply delights in sadistically inflicting maximum punishment on as many people as possible. Not only that, but Iran continues to violate the ceasefire while refusing to agree to reasonable terms.

The only conclusion to draw from this situation is that Iran is the “bad guy,” which every rational American already understood Iran to be.

Yet many leftists are not acting like Iran is the “bad guy.” The loud and omnipresent denunciations of Israel — heard for the past two years in every college, urban center, street protest, and even some political campaigns — are totally lacking. Yet, compared with Iran, Israel conducts wars with the care and gentleness of Mr. Rogers.

Where are the cries of genocide, of war crimes, of demands to use America’s full power to end the evil regime? They are not there. Does this mean there is a double standard for Israel? There seems to be no other explanation. And the word for such a double standard is “anti-Semitism.”

On Wednesday, House Democrats carried a resolution to force the president to end the Iran war, with support from four Republicans. The resolution perpetuates the charade of pretending that Iran is a normal state that plays by the rules, not one that lost every play in the war and still demands to be called the victor by cheating.

Yes, Iran is certainly the “bad guy.” Will we let the bad guy win?

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Iran Strikes Kuwaiti International Airport, Kills One Dozens Wounded

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Shooting Strait: The Iranian Ceasefire That Wasn’t

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

President Donald Trump had no sooner declared the Iran war “terminated” in a Friday letter to Congress than fighting broke out afresh. On Monday, Iranian forces chose to attack the merchant ships, the U.S. Navy, and other peaceful neighbors, and the U.S. sank six small Iranian attack boats in response. The Trump administration would rather not let such skirmishes derail the fragile ceasefire, but the Iranian regime still appears unwilling to play ball.

Two days after President Trump told Congress that hostilities with the Iranian regime were “terminated,” he announced a new operation, Project Freedom, whereby the U.S. military would create a safe corridor for civilian ships to leave the Persian Gulf. On Monday, U.S. destroyers escorted two U.S.-flagged tankers through the Strait, near the Omani shore, demonstrating that the U.S. military had cleared a “free lane” of Iranian mines. U.S. Central Command then advised commercial vessels to use the lane, while American naval vessels and military aircraft in the Strait provided a defensive shield.

For the Iranian regime, whose only remaining leverage in negotiations are the oil tankers trapped in the Persian Gulf, allowing America’s gambit to succeed would be effectively a final defeat. The “ceasefire” that President Trump unilaterally declared on April 7 largely consisted of the U.S. keeping its assets out of the Iranian regime’s diminished reach. But here was the U.S. Navy traipsing across Iran’s own backyard, practically daring Iran to attack. The remnants of the ruined regime reasoned they might never receive a better opportunity.

So, Iran attacked. They launched cruise missiles at American destroyers, and they launched drones on an empty Emirati tanker and a South Korean vessel trying to flee. They launched a squadron of fast attack boats — whether to lay mines, attack vessels, or capture them is unclear. And, for good measure, the Iranian regime also launched some 15 missiles and drones at its peaceful neighbor, the UAE, striking the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone on a UAE pipeline that bypasses the Strait.

Iran’s best available opportunity was still not a good one. The attack only demonstrated the regime’s impotence. The U.S. Navy intercepted the incoming missiles, and Apache helicopters sank the speedboats. Iran did manage to damage the civilian vessels and civilian targets in the UAE, but striking defenseless civilian targets is not really an impressive feat.

Iran’s pitiful provocations may elicit escalation in one form or another. President Trump declared that Iranian ships that attacked U.S. vessels would be “blown off the face of the earth,” and the furious Emiratis will insist that attacks against them must be answered. “The Iranians have fired the first shots to end the cease-fire,” observed The Wall Street Journal editors, “which is all the reason Mr. Trump needs to use the force to stop them from getting away with it again.”

However, the Trump administration has not publicly declared that Iran is in violation of the agreement. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the ceasefire “certainly holds” for now. What value there is in a “ceasefire” where both parties have resumed firing is a matter for debate.

The Trump administration’s reason for sticking to the ceasefire has nothing to do with the Iranian regime and everything to do with its domestic political situation. Finding Congress unwilling to support a campaign to finish the job, the Trump administration decided instead to tell Congress that the war was already over — whether Congress believes it or not.

“The greatest enemy is our own political dynamics,” lamented Michael Rubin, director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum, on “Washington Watch.” “The Iranians know that the Iranians have lost by any metric. It’s quite amazing how many people think that the United States has been stalemated.”

“In this case, the Iranians have lost a top three or four layers of their leadership,” he explained. “They’ve lost most of their military equipment, they’ve lost their economy, and so forth. We are in a position to dictate to them. We shouldn’t go into a game of poker having a full house or a royal flush and be out-bluffed by a pair of twos.”

“Historically, the American people have a short temperament for these types of things,” agreed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “You get a new administration, and they’ll completely reverse course.”

The Iranian regime is likely counting on just that. “Their usual playbook … is simply to run down the clock in the hope that the people with whom they’re negotiating will eventually move on,” Rubin responded. “Because, of course, while Iran is a dictatorship, we’re a democracy. And therefore, what they’re doing is fishing for a future official who might rescue them from the mess which the Iranians now find themselves in.”

Of course, such a claim requires a definition of the Iranian regime — some understanding of who is actually running the country. Over the past month, the Iranian regime has maintained a defiant military posture, even with “certain conversations taking place, but the actions are not meshing with the conversations,” Perkins described. To him, this suggested that “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard is actually driving the train.”

“That is precisely correct,” assented former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “I would add, I think that’s largely been true for 47 years. I think it has been the hardest of the hardcore that’s been driving this, with a theocratic veneer that’s now been shed because of the ayatollah’s demise.”

When dealing with the Iranian regime, said the man who actually did so, it’s important to remember that “there aren’t any ‘moderates’ … in the sense that we would understand people who don’t want to destroy the nation of Israel, who aren’t trying to create a caliphate. They believe all the same things that the radicals do. Their methodologies, their timing may be different, but there is not a leader inside of Iran that doesn’t believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran is entitled to rule the Middle East, and that Israel has no place in the region.”

“The IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] is a powerful, capable military,” but “we’ve taken out much of that,” Pompeo described. However, in addition, IRGC operatives “are important politically — that is, they have the guns inside. They have capacity to control the populace. But they’re also an economic juggernaut. They own as much as one-fifth or one-third of the Iranian economy.”

“I happen to agree with Secretary Pompeo on this,” Rubin confirmed. “When some people have said that Donald Trump’s actions have only radicalized the regime, I don’t think they’re actually seeing the big picture. Iran, of course, is a conscript society. And therefore, you either were conscripted into the army or you had to join the Revolutionary Guard. … And as soon as the bombs started dropping, these guys who weren’t true believers simply faded into the woodwork. What remained were the true believers.”

Rubin also explained how the IRGC cultivates such “true believers” in its failing ideology. “You can go into that bubble when you’re eight years old, because they run the equivalent of evil Boy Scout programs,” he said. “Then they have student clubs. They run their own universities. And so, if you’ve been indoctrinated since the age of eight, you may actually believe what may sound like nonsense to us, which so many previous administrations in Washington were willing to dismiss as rhetorical flourish. They’re not rhetorical flourish.”

The ideological commitment of those driving Iranian policy is one reason why the Islamic regime has so stubbornly refused to negotiate a surrender of its fissile material — even after its military was all but destroyed. In its latest 14-point peace proposal, “almost each of those 14 points” was “so ridiculous on the face that really what the Iranians are trying to do is signal to the United States they’re not interested in negotiating,” said Rubin. “Ideologically, they will never accept a solution.”

Iran’s ideological inflexibility is a “conundrum that President Trump and, frankly, every president before him” has faced, said Pompeo. Rubin agreed, “The United States is very bad, traditionally, at understanding the ideology of its adversaries. And Donald Trump … is a fabulous negotiator … from this milieu of real estate dealing and so forth. But … you can’t be transactional with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

This belated realization prompted Trump to blockade Iran’s ports, deciding that the only way to break the IRGC’s hold on power was to box in the economic engine they control. “President Trump is on the right track,” cheered Pompeo. “The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is certainly impacting their revenue, their ability to pay their soldiers, their proxy forces.”

“The Iranians have never been in such poor economic straits,” reiterated Rubin. “The Iranian currency is now 1.8 million to the dollar. At the time of the revolution, it was 70 to the dollar. It’s in freefall. They can’t export their oil. They can’t import their gasoline. And remember, the Persian Gulf might be huge, but there’s only about 10 Iranian ports there that we need to control. And, right now, we’re controlling them.”

“If we’re going to negotiate, we negotiate from a position of strength,” Rubin urged. The blockade achieves that, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz strips away the last bit of leverage the Iranian regime has. Neither measure, however, is strictly peaceful. Even still, Pompeo said, “There is no negotiated solution that actually gets to a place where the regime will acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, that the United States should exist, and that the Iranian regime should not be in possession of a nuclear weapons capability.”

Pompeo and Rubin both agreed that weakening the IRGC also opened a pathway for internal revolt — though a slim one. “There’s an analogy with regard to Serbia,” Rubin proposed, “where, when Bill Clinton bombed Serbia, he didn’t unseat Slobodan Milosevic. That happened the next year because Slobodan Milosevic wasn’t able to pay the salaries, and a lot of his allies had simply been killed in this bombing.”

However, “the difference between Slobodan Milosevic and the Iranian leadership is that Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian nationalists weren’t willing to wholesale slaughter everyone in their country,” Rubin cautioned. “It appears that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are. And, even if the Iranians among them aren’t, they’re importing Hezbollah and Iraqi militias to do the same thing.”

An internal uprising “is possible,” said Pompeo. “I don’t think that’s the most likely outcome, but it’s the one that we should support and pray and root for.”

Rather, the aim of the American blockade is to so weaken Iran that the IRGC is forced to agree to a deal which is effectively a surrender, Pompeo suggested. “I think that’s how this ultimately ends up being resolved. And that means more time, a little bit more patience by the American people — some more cost to the American consumers, for sure. But this is a resolve that I think is really important for Western civilization to achieve.”

However, he warned that such a “surrender” would not represent a change in heart or ideology, only a temporary surrender to circumstances. “So long as the regime is in power, they may pause for two years or five years or 10, but their determination will remain,” he said. “And so, from a Western perspective, the objective is to wipe out their capability materially. Get a verification regime around their nuclear program so that there’s no enrichment, no capacity to actually ever threaten the world again with a nuclear weapon. And then, be mindful.”

There is no permanent peace with the radical Islamic regime that rules Iran, only ceasefires of more or less value, lasting for shorter or longer periods of time.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Mass Immigration from Muslim Countries Has ‘Eroded’ European Culture, Threatens American Safety Next

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

A top Republican official is warning that mass immigration from Third World — in particular, Muslim — countries risks destroying American society, pointing to Europe as an example. In a Fox News interview last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) emphasized the danger posed to American culture and society by the growth of Islamic Sharia law, brought to the country by immigrants from majority-Muslim countries.

He urged state legislators to pass laws banning the Muslim practice of first-cousin marriage, which he described as “obviously part of cultures that are antithetical to American values.” The governor also touted his own actions to ban the practice of Sharia law. “We don’t want to end up like Europe, where they have no-go zones, where you have these little subcultures where this stuff is imposed,” he said. “That now is totally off the table in Florida.”

“They’ve really shot themselves in the foot,” DeSantis said of Europe, reflecting on the historic ties the U.S. shares with many European nations. “You look at, like, the United Kingdom — that has been our best ally historically. We obviously came from there, our culture grew out of English culture, our Constitution and laws, all this stuff, very tight bond,” he continued. “But I think what they’ve done — and other European countries have done — they’ve imported in mass numbers people who don’t want to be British, don’t want to be French. They want to take where they came from, and they want to change those countries to reflect things like Sharia.”

“So if the reason why we have been allied with them for so long is because we have strong political and cultural bonds, well, those have eroded because of decisions that they have made,” the Florida governor said of immigration policies enacted by European leaders. “I think what they have done, particularly on mass immigration, has been suicidal. We can’t make those mistakes in the United States.”

Over the past 25 years in particular, much of Europe has been transformed by mass immigration from the Middle East and the Third World, bringing with it chain migration, Muslim culture and Sharia law, increased crime and violence, and a swollen burden on European welfare systems. Some European nations — notably, Hungary and Poland — have resisted the immigration influx, but the governments of many European nations have not only permitted but, in many cases, openly encouraged and facilitated mass immigration. This increase in immigration, much of which comes from Middle Eastern and Third World countries, has eroded the fabric of European society and threatened to entirely decimate European culture, erasing all that once bonded the U.S. to the “Old World.”

The shift in population makeup has been drastic, particularly as the birth rates of native Europeans have declined catastrophically and the birth rates of foreigners — particularly Muslims — rise well above replacement level. The statistics cited below are drawn from Eurostat, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and national statistics offices.

Germany

At the dawn of the 21st century, Germany’s foreign-born population stood no higher than eight million, in a nation of nearly 83 million. The vast majority of foreigners were fellow Europeans who had moved to Germany for a variety of reasons: work, study, family, culture. Fewer than three million foreigners hailed from the Middle East or the Third World; of these, the majority (nearly two million) were guest-workers from Turkey or their families, along with some from Morocco and the first few “refugees” from Iraq and Afghanistan.

By the end of 2025, roughly one-fifth of Germany’s population was foreign-born, amounting to nearly 20 million people. Those from the Middle East and the Third World accounted for over half of the foreigners. Most of those came from Turkey (millions), Syria (approximately one million), Afghanistan (over 450,000), Iraq (over 250,000), and hundreds of thousands more from Africa and southern Asia. Like much of the Western world, Germany’s native birth rate has plummeted, falling to a total fertility rate (TFR) of less than 1.5 by the end of 2020. Meanwhile, the TFR of Germany’s foreign-born population sits at well over 3.0, with foreigners accounting for over 20% of births in Germany by the end of 2020.

In 2015, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel instituted an “open door” asylum policy, which saw over one million “refugees” from majority-Muslim countries enter Germany within a single year. At the time, the European Union’s Dublin Regulation mandated that EU member states process asylum applications according to the first country that the asylum claimant enters. For example, a Syrian national could not enter France and claim asylum in Spain; France would process his asylum claim and agree to give him refuge. Merkel abandoned that policy for Syrian and Afghan asylum claimants, allowing other EU member states to shift the asylum claims to Germany and encouraging asylum claimants to cross Germany’s borders.

In 2003, the EU had enacted its Family Reunification Policy, which allowed member states to either welcome the immediate family members (spouses and children under the age of 18) of non-European nationals living in those member states, or else to restrict the immigration of family members on the basis of national security concerns or a lack of housing and welfare. Merkel suspended Germany’s application of this policy.

The results of this mass immigration, framed by Merkel and her political allies as “humanitarian,” has been disastrous for Germany. On New Year’s Eve 2015 and New Year’s Day 2016, within a year of Merkel’s “open door” policy taking effect, over 1,200 German women reported being raped or sexually assaulted. The majority (roughly 650 sexual assaults and 22 rapes) occurred in Cologne, with hundreds of other sexual assaults and rapes taking place in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, and Frankfurt. Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers confirmed at the time, “The crimes were committed by a group of people who from appearance were largely from the north African or Arab world.”

Albers resigned days later, citing a loss of public trust. His successor, Jürgen Mathies, argued against speculation that the mass sexual assaults and rapes had been planned or organized in advance, instead suggesting that sexual assault and rape were simply common features of African and Arab culture. Out of an estimated 500 assailants in Cologne, only 153 suspects were identified: 149 were foreign nationals, while the remaining four were teenagers born in Germany to foreign parents; more than two-thirds of the assailants were from Algeria or Morocco; nearly half (44%) were asylum claimants.

Late in December of 2016, Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian national whose asylum application was rejected by Germany (after he had already been let in), shot and killed Polish truck driver ?ukasz Urban and stole his truck. Amri proceeded to drive the vehicle at high speed through the Breitscheidplatz Christmas Market in Berlin, killing 11 people and injuring 56 others. In the aftermath of the attack, it was discovered that the Muslim Amri had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). Less than a decade later, Saudi Arabian national Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen rented a BMW SUV and drove, at high speed, through a Christmas Market in Magdeburg, killing a nine-year-old boy and five women and injuring over 300 people.

According to the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), Germany’s federal police force, over 40% of crimes are committed by foreign nationals, while nearly half (49.3%) of violent crimes are committed by foreign nationals. Another BKA report determined that while 163 out of every 100,000 Germans are suspects of violent crimes, that rate goes up by more than 10 times for foreign nationals: 1,740 per 100,000 for Syrian nationals and 1,722 for Afghan nationals, for example.

France

In 2001, the foreign-born population of France was below six million, of which less than half were from the Middle East or the Third World. The majority of non-Western immigrants were from Algeria, a former French colony, with others from Morocco, Tunisia, and sub-Saharan Africa. By the end of 2025, the foreign-born population had ballooned to about 10 million, accounting for roughly 13% of the population. Nearly half (45%) are from Africa, while many come from the Middle East. While the TFR among the native French is 1.6 (the highest in the EU), the TFR among foreigners is approximately 2.5, with nearly one-third of births in France attributed to foreigners.

Like Germany, France has also liberalized immigration policies over the years, bringing in large numbers of foreign workers and expanding asylum and refugee caps. Also like Germany, France has experienced a surge in Islamist violence. In 2012, Algerian Mohammed Merah attacked and killed three French soldiers before targeting a Jewish school in Toulouse and killing three children and a rabbi. In 2014, three police officers were attacked and injured at the Tours police station by a knife-wielding man shouting, “Allahu Akbar.” Just a few weeks later, brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, forced their way into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine and opened fire with automatic weapons, killing 12 people and injuring 11 others.

From 2015 onwards, Islamist terrorist attacks became nearly commonplace in France. Outside the Louvre, an Egyptian national attacked three police officers with a knife, wounding two. Yassin Salhi set off an explosion in a factory outside Lyon after decapitating a factory worker and mounting his head on a fence, accompanied by Islamist supremacist writing. Five people were injured in a shooting and stabbing attack by an Islamist extremist aboard a train bound for Paris. Later in the year, 137 were killed and over 400 more injured in a series of orchestrated shootings and suicide bombings, mostly concentrated in Paris and the surrounding suburbs.

Since then, well over 100 people have been killed in Islamist terrorist attacks in France — from Catholic priests on their way to celebrate Mass to teachers and schoolchildren — and hundreds more have been injured.

Spain

Under the military leader and head of state Francisco Franco, Spain hosted very few Muslims, only two or three thousand per year, who were forced to repatriate at the end of the year. By 2001, the Muslim population in Spain — hailing predominantly from Morocco, Pakistan, and Senegal — was nearing one million. By 2008, it stood at 1.2 million. Today, nearly one fifth of Spain’s population is foreign-born, of which nearly three million are Muslims. A series of amnesties enacted in the 1980s and 1990s, following Franco’s death and the ascent of a secular (and now socialist) government, normalized Muslim immigration and encouraged increased illegal immigration, so that Spain has an abnormally high rate of illegal immigration today.

As with other European nations, Spain has seen an increase in Islamist terrorist attacks and related crime, starting with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which claimed the lives of nearly 200 people and injured more than 2,000. A subsequent series of terrorist attacks in Barcelona left 15 dead and 120 injured. Of course, Islamist violence isn’t always bombings, stabbings, shootings, and decapitations. More recently, 25-year-old Spaniard Noelia Castillo was euthanized after a suicide attempt linked to a series of gang rapes reportedly perpetrated by Muslim immigrants.

United Kingdom

Muslim gang rape has proven to be a widespread problem in Britain. In 2001, the U.K. counted fewer than two million Middle Eastern and Third World immigrants as residents, predominantly originating from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, but with many Muslim arrivals from the Middle East. That share has more than quadrupled in the succeeding years, so that more than eight million British residents now come from Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and the Middle East.

In the 2000s and early 2010s, EU immigration policies and the liberalized asylum policies of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair saw immigration to the U.K. rise sharply. That rise slowed following Brexit and the U.K.’s departure from the EU, but the post-Brexit “point system” allowed many illegal and temporary immigrants to earn a lengthier stay, and the governing Conservative Party did little to halt illegal immigration or enact deportations.

In 2005, Islamist suicide bombers attacked London Underground trains and double-decker buses, killing 52 and injuring nearly 500. Nigerians Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale ran over British Army Fusilier Lee Rigby with their car before using a knife and a meat cleaver to stab him to death, drag his body into the street, and hack him to pieces. In 2017, Khalid Masood drove a car through a crowd on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four people and injuring nearly 50, before fleeing his car and fatally stabbing a police officer. Months later, an Islamist suicide bomber targeted Manchester Arena following a concert, killing 22 and injuring over 1,000. Just weeks after that, Pakistan-born Khuram Shazad Butt, African “asylum seeker” Rachid Redouane, and Moroccan Youssef Zaghba drove a car through a crowd on the London Bridge before exiting the vehicle and launching a stabbing spree. Eight people were killed, and 48 were injured, including 21 who were critically injured.

In recent months, much attention has also been given to “grooming gangs.” Since the 1990s, police and government prosecutors have been reportedly made aware of gangs of Muslim immigrants (mostly Pakistani in origin) and the practice of grooming and serially raping young white girls, especially teenagers. According to official reports, the rape gangs would typically approach girls in public places, or sometimes have a young Muslim boy of about the girl’s age approach her or begin a relationship with her, and then entice her using gifts and favors, such as fast food and meals out, cigarettes, alcohol, and perfumes or clothes. The girl would then be raped, often violently, and frequently shared with other members of the family, including brothers, cousins, and uncles. Girls were often threatened afterwards and, in some cases, were coerced into drug dependency so that the rape gangs could maintain control over the girls.

According to the British government, various police departments refused to record the ethnicity of rape gang members. Numerous cases were either not investigated thoroughly or not investigated at all. The few cases that were referred for prosecution were never prosecuted. Current Prime Minister Keir Starmer was, at the time, the director of the Crown Prosecution Service. Louise Baroness Casey of Blackstock, who led the government’s official inquiry and audit into the rape gangs, wrote that authorities “shied away from” investigating or reporting the crimes, with many of those interviewed suggesting that they did not want to be labeled racist.

Member of Parliament (MP) Sarah Champion, who represented Rotherham, where over 1,400 girls were raped by Muslim gangs, suggested that up to one million girls could have been raped nationwide. MP Rupert Lowe, founder and leader of the immigration hardline party Restore Britain, suggested that every single “foreign rapist” ought to be identified, arrested, and deported. Government inquiries into the issue have not yet revealed the full scope of the abuse.

Conclusion

Mass immigration, particularly from majority-Muslim countries, has decimated Europe. DeSantis’s warning against the potential for first cousin-marriage pales in comparison to hundreds and thousands of deaths and injuries from terrorist attacks and hundreds of thousands of girls systematically gang-raped. Policies banning the practice of Sharia law only treat a symptom, not the disease, which can only be addressed through stringent immigration control, as Europe has learned far too late.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: U.S. Positive on Iran Deal but Talks Still Uncertain as End of Truce Nears

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Battlefield Triumph, Diplomatic Puzzles: The Big Picture of Operation Epic Fury

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

As the mainstream media tells it, Operation Epic Fury is “quickly becoming a disaster.” “The U.S. has been caught flat-footed.” “Helpless America” cowers before “a bullying Iran.” The whole operation is one giant “miscalculation.” Every armchair doctor prescribes the same remedy: the Trump administration should declare defeat, take its over-priced toys back to the home barracks, and drink its sorrows away from a stream of self-flagellating tears. How dare the object of all this Derangement Syndrome ever believe America could be a winner again?

The simple answer is that President Trump dares to believe in America because America is awesome, and because our unparalleled military is currently putting on a once-in-a-generation display of dominance. The media is hung up on every small mishap, the side-effect of rising oil prices, and the unknowns about what the Iranians are thinking or where their surviving leadership is hiding. “The proper term for this is the fog of war,” Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, explained on “Washington Watch.” “And it happens in every conflict. But … all the uncertainty, all the churn, all the turmoil is being amplified by social media, and by the way, the conflict is being reported.”

“If you break through the noise, and if you take a look at what’s actually happening — if you listen to political leaders, it’s not so clear — if you listen to military leaders, it’s actually very clear … that there’s a sort of a clear, methodical plan,” argued Berman. “And it’s progressing ‘at pace.’ … It’s very clear that the plan is phased, and it’s methodical.”

“The first phase was that strategic surprise that we saw at the end of February with the decapitation of the regime, the killing of Iran’s supreme leader,” Berman listed. “The second phase is what we’re nearing the end of now, which is the elimination of Iran’s offensive capabilities: its ability to shoot drones, to fire missiles, to hold American allies and American assets in the region at risk. And what comes next is the elimination of Iran’s defensive capabilities, basically degrading Iran’s defense-industrial base so Iran can’t rebuild those capabilities.”

National Review’s Noah Rothman records that the initial decapitation strikes “neutralized roughly 40 senior Iranian leadership figures,” followed by “Iran’s armed forces and intelligence leaders, national security figureheads, senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij paramilitary commanders, and the brainpower behind Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”

In the second and third weeks of war, Rothman continued, the U.S. and Israel completely demolished both the Iranian Air Force and its Navy of 120 ships. They disabled most of Iran’s air and missile bases. And, of course, “Iran’s once formidable network of terrorist proxies across the Middle East was decimated” over the past two years of war.

From there, Operation Epic Fury began targeting Iran’s military infrastructure, targeting nuclear facilities, “missile-production facilities, drone manufacturers, explosives-production plants, and sensitive electronics developers,” Rothman added. “Before the end of the third week of fighting, the United States had achieved command of the skies in southern Iran sufficient to deploy vulnerable air assets” that could strafe attack boats, shoot drones in flight, or drop bombs without stealth technology. The U.S. and Israel have eliminated 70% of Iran’s missile launchers, struck buried missile garages, and loiter above bunkers watching for activity.

All this was achieved with only a handful of U.S. deaths and a few hundred injuries. From a tactical perspective, it’s hard to imagine how Operation Epic Fury could have been any more successful. “[Twenty-five] days in, the greatest military the world has ever known is ahead of schedule and performing exceptionally day by day,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt exulted this week. “From the outset, President Trump and the Department of War estimated it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve this critical mission.”

Of course, strategic victories are always more important and longer-lasting than tactical ones. Thus far, America’s war effort has exposed a “trilateral strategic pact” signed by Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran to be so many empty promises, demonstrated the shortcomings in Russian and Chinese anti-air defenses offered for sale abroad, and turned the rest of the Persian Gulf countries firmly against Iran and towards the U.S. and Israel.

Yet, while those are nice side effects of the war, they aren’t sufficient to justify America’s involvement in the war or exit from it. Key members of Congress from both parties are now asking the administration for more answers about its war aims, especially after the Pentagon requested an extra $200 billion in funding.

Those are legitimate questions because “it’s not clear exactly what the ultimate objectives … actually are,” Berman noted. The question is rendered more crucial by the recent deployment of thousands of U.S. Marines and paratroopers to the Middle East. “Like the vast majority of Americans, I’m firmly against the idea of a large-scale troop deployment in Iran itself,” said Berman. “I don’t want boots on the ground in Iran. I don’t want anything resembling the repeat of Iraq.”

However, “there is a problem that the administration has to solve,” he added. “When the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in the summer of last year, there was something on the order of 440kg of highly enriched uranium —uranium that is enriched to 60% purity, which [was] left in these ruined facilities. … Somebody has to get ahold of this fissile material, whether the Iranians … turn it over, or a third party, or the U.S. itself.” He suggested “the window of opportunity” for a U.S.-led extraction effort will close if a ceasefire agreement is reached.

Iran has managed to create a second problem for the United States during the war. In a close imitation of their proxy Hamas versus Israel, Iranian officials appear to be pursuing an asymmetrical strategy of losing the military battlefield while winning the diplomatic, economic, and geopolitical struggle. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is extorting commercial ships, charging them a $2 million ransom to traverse the Strait of Hormuz in safety, behaving as if the international thoroughfare were their own private canal.

Iran is trying to wring out the Strait of Hormuz like the neck of the global energy market, believing those Western wimps will then whine their way out of the war. If the tactic holds, then the Iranian regime will establish the principle that the Strait of Hormuz is theirs, and that they can shut off 20% of the world’s oil supply whenever anyone attacks them — making it impossible to ever attack them again.

But Iran never reckoned on the contingency that the commander in chief of the flotilla sitting just outside their harbor believes in total victory. Oil price shocks may cause some pain and consternation, but they have not yet driven the Trump administration to surrender. Overnight Wednesday, Israel killed the commander of the IRGC Navy, responsible for the Strait choke-out strategy.

After President Trump’s ultimatum to up the stakes last weekend, the Iranian regime apparently responded by offering to negotiate, releasing 10 oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz to show that they are serious, said President Trump. The president recently communicated a 15-point peace plan to the Iranian regime through a Pakistani intermediary, which demanded the regime dismantle and renounce its nuclear program, limit its missiles, and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping. Iranian officials rejected the list of demands, but it shows the objectives Trump is fighting to obtain in the war.

The five-day pause Trump declared in order to give diplomacy a chance expires on Friday, and the U.S. is moving forces into position for potential future attacks. “There does not need to be any more death and destruction, but if Iran fails to accept the reality of the current moment, if they fail to understand that they have been defeated militarily and will continue to be, President Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before,” Leavitt warned.

The next test will prove the most interesting. The Iranian regime is relying on its death grip over the Strait of Hormuz — since indeed that is its only card left to play. The test will be whether America’s (and Israel’s) undisputed — and now unchallenged — military superiority can pry that death grip free. Soaring gas prices may be painful for a few weeks, but America survived them in 2022 without even having the end of one of the world’s worst regimes to show for it.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

America is Standing on the Right Side of History

Truth Matters in the Iran War — and Americans Aren’t Getting It

Iran’s Neighbors Beg U.S. Not to End War Yet: Expert

For Democrats, a Post-Trump Reckoning Awaits

RELATED VIDEO: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu openly supports Crown Prince of Iran Reza Pahlavi

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Oil Prices, Strategic Trade-offs, and the Strait of Hormuz

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

One unavoidable side-effect of gasoline prices being prominently posted in front of every roadside service station is that Americans remain constantly aware of the volatile fluctuations in gas prices. Since the start of President Trump’s military action against Iran, the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded fuel has jumped from $2.98 on February 28 to $3.72 on March 16. World oil prices, which ended December under $60 per barrel, have now reached as high as $106 per barrel (as of this writing, they sat at $93 per barrel). With a jump like that, not only Americans but the entire world is taking notice.

The current spike in oil and gas prices is a direct result of the U.S. military’s combat against Iran. Instead of acting like a responsible state that follows the laws of war and spares non-combatants, the Islamist Iranian regime reacted by launching missiles indiscriminately at all its neighbors, including at civilian targets.

Iran’s indiscriminate attacks have not spared international commercial shipping, including oil tankers. Since the conflict began, U.K. Maritime Trade Operations has recorded at least 14 reported attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf or Strait of Hormuz. This has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, as the owners and crews of those vessels naturally do not wish to become foolhardy casualties of war. (Notably, Iranian and Chinese ships continue to sail through unmolested.)

This closure affects global oil markets because the oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf produce 20% of the world’s oil supply, and their crude oil must pass through the strait to reach global markets. (The Strait of Hormuz, which separates Iran from the Arabian Peninsula, is the Persian Gulf’s only outlet to the sea; at its narrowest point, it measures a mere 24 miles across, no wider than the Amazon River in the rainy season.)

Global oil markets, in turn, affect U.S. gas prices because of the basic principles of supply and demand. Under normal circumstances, the U.S. only imports a small amount of oil from the Persian Gulf, around 2%, while countries like China and India import a much larger quantity. However, when the oil supply from the Persian Gulf is cut off, all the countries that did buy its oil still have the same demand for oil, and they go looking for other suppliers to make up the difference. Thus, an impact on the oil supply in one area of the world will affect oil prices globally.

American strategists have long considered an oil price shock due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to be an expected — or at least likely — consequence of war with Iran. “Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” CNN quoted an anonymous former security official.

Yet, to hear CNN tell it, the Trump administration did not prepare for this likely scenario at all. “Top Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers during recent classified briefings that they did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz in response to strikes,” the original version of the article claimed.

Such an outrageous claim was bound to be challenged. “Of course, for decades, Iran has threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz,” responded Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth. “This is always what they do: hold the Strait hostage. CNN doesn’t think we thought of that. It’s a fundamentally unserious report.” The National Review editors note that Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Iran against closing the Strait just last year, and that one of the Trump administration’s stated goals in the current conflict is to degrade Iran’s capability to do so.

CNN’s story now includes the following “CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to reflect additional developments and clarify that top Trump administration officials briefed lawmakers on long-standing military plans to address a major disruption to the Strait, according to one official, but that multiple sources familiar with the session said there was no indication there were any near-term solutions.”

There’s a big difference between, “The Trump administration totally forgot to account for this glaring vulnerability,” and, “The Trump administration considered the vulnerability but doesn’t have a near-term solution for it.”

As in all of life, politics is about trade-offs, and particularly so in war strategy. The Wall Street Journal reports that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine briefed President Donald Trump on Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz with mines, drones, and missiles. “Trump acknowledged the risk … but moved forward” anyway, they wrote. “He told his team that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the strait — and even if Iran tried, the U.S. military could handle it.”

In hindsight, this assessment was clearly too optimistic, but every war strategy suffers from setbacks, accidents, and unknowns. On the other hand, allowing Iran the time to build more missiles and potentially a nuclear weapon could have resulted in even worse consequences.

The reason why the U.S. Constitution invests executive power in one individual is so that one seasoned leader can be responsible for weighing the various tradeoffs and reaching a final decision. In other words, the U.S. presidency exists to make hard decisions just like this one. And those who don’t like the decisions Trump makes had their opportunity to elect a different president.

While the heightened price of gas and oil is causing Americans undeniable pain at the pump, the National Review editors allow that “None of this is catastrophic. The price of Brent crude settled above $100 a barrel on Friday. That’s the highest in four years, not in, say, 60 years. But the clock is ticking.” Indeed, oil prices hit $113 per barrel in June 2022 and $128 per barrel in July 2008. In between, oil prices peaked in April 2011 ($108 per barrel), March 2012 ($105 per barrel), August 2013 ($102 per barrel), and June 2014 ($98 per barrel). So, administration critics do have legitimate grounds to hit Trump over high gas prices, but only as hard as they hit President Joe Biden for the historic inflation in 2021-2022.

That said, the Trump administration is not doing themselves any favors in public perception by appearing desperate and unprepared for this eventuality. The Trump administration has promised military escorts for oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, but they have yet to work out the logistics. Meanwhile, the U.S. issued a 30-day waiver for countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil — after President Trump slammed U.S. allies for doing just that — offering Russia’s tottering regime an invaluable financial lifeline.

Errors of strategy and judgment are inevitable in war, even when a superpower like the United States is dominantly pummeling a stubborn rogue regime like that of the Iranian mullahs. But just because the Trump administration has fumbled one snap does not mean that they failed to call the right play. A turnover can be costly, but the only thing that matters is the scoreboard when time expires.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

PERKINS: Leadership by Principle, Not Polling

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Sir Edmund Burke, in a speech to the Electors of Bristol in 1774, said: “Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

That may not sit well in an age of polling and clamor for direct democracy, but the reality is this: the duty of statesmen is not to follow public opinion, but to lead it. In moments of crisis, leaders are not called to read the polls — they are called to rise above them.

And that is exactly what President Donald Trump has done to this point in the war with Iran. When asked about public polling — where most surveys show a majority opposing the war — Trump responded, “I don’t care about polling.”

That statement gained my immediate attention, because in almost every conversation or meeting I have had with the president, he often references the polls — favorable polls.

I note this not as criticism, but to commend the president for stepping into the role of a statesman who leads in the direction the nation needs to go, regardless of the political consequences.

The stock market — very familiar territory for the president — has gone a bit wobbly. Gas prices have risen quickly, though they remain below the peak Americans experienced in the summer of 2022, when the average gallon approached $5. Some congressional Republicans are also expressing concern about the possible impact on the midterm elections.

These are big issues — in the short term. That is why most administrations confronting the Iranian nuclear threat sought to contain it, if they could not avoid it altogether.

To use a familiar phrase from American politics over the last 60 or 70 years, they simply kicked the can down the road so the next administration — or the next generation — would deal with it.

Donald Trump concluded there was no road left.

Open sources suggest Iran possessed roughly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60% before the launch of Operation Epic Fury. Iran was racing to reach the 90% weapons-grade level — enough material for roughly 10 nuclear warheads. Enough to hold the world hostage, if not destroy large parts of it.

If there has been a justifiable war since World War II, this may be it. This is not defending oil-rich countries made wealthy by American dependence. This is confronting a direct threat to our security and to that of our natural ally, Israel.

When the leadership of a rogue regime repeatedly calls America the “Great Satan,” vows to destroy us, and sponsors repeated terrorist attacks against Americans — at what point should we believe them?

As president, Donald Trump had the constitutional authority to act. Based on the available facts, the war is justified, and the stated purpose is right: peace in the Middle East and justice for the Iranian people.

President Trump should be commended for taking the regime at its word and responding — not because it was politically popular, but because it was justified, militarily and morally.

And in doing so, he illustrated the very principle Burke described 250 years ago: a leader who governs not by the polls, but by judgment.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

US and Israel Strike ‘Regime’s Protest-Crushing Machine’

Muslim Gunman Mohamed Jalloh Who Shouted “ALLAHU AKBAR!” In Fatal Old Dominion University Shooting ID’d as Convicted Islamic State Supporter

Armed Siege at Norway Synagogue: Elite Police Swarm Trondheim in Major Operation

Active Shooter at Temple Israel, Synagogue and School in Michigan

ISIS Signs Inside Mamdani’s Mansion After Jihad Shrapnel Bombing

Three Muslim Brothers Arrested in Terror Bomb Blast at US Embassy in Norway

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Media Ignored Gabbard’s 2025 Islamization Warning, but Hill GOPers Are Taking Action

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

America’s mainstream media mostly ignored Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard’s detailed warning about the growing threat of Islamization in the United States, which was issued a few days before Christmas last year during a Turning Point USA event.

Conservative media like The Daily Caller devoted significant space to the speech, but a search of The New York Times website, for example, turned up no references to the former Democratic congresswoman’s remarks despite the fact that it included this stunningly direct admonition:

“There is a threat to our freedom that is not often talked about enough, and it is the greatest near and long-term threat to both our freedom and our security, and that is the threat of Islamist ideology. It is propagated by people who not only do not believe in freedom; their fundamental ideology is antithetical to the foundation that we find in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which is that our Creator endowed upon us inalienable rights, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Gabbard pointed to a conference earlier in 2025 in which the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) “issued a call to action to use the American legal and political systems to overthrow the United States government. This Islamist ideology is a direct threat to our freedom because, at its core, it is a political ideology that seeks to create a global Caliphate that governs here in the U.S., in America, threatening Western civilization — [it is] governance by Sharia law.”

Sharia law is the civil and religious law prescribed by the Islamic religion’s Koran to regulate public and private life. Among much else, Sharia sanctions husbands treating wives as slaves, justifies Islamic men raping non-Islamic women, requires the death penalty for those who identify as homosexual, death by stoning for adulterers, and forces non-Muslims to convert or face death by beheading.

By failing to recognize and take decisive action to defeat this threat, Gabbard predicted, “we will find ourselves in a place where many European countries and countries like Australia have found themselves. Countries where you can get arrested for praying silently on a street corner, as happened in the U.K. Countries where you can be arrested for putting up a social media post.”

“In places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, clerics are openly pushing this Islamist ideology, trying to recruit and radicalize young people. This is already underway in places like Houston. This is not something that may possibly happen. It is already happening here within our borders. Paterson, New Jersey, is proud to call themselves the first Muslim city. They are working to implement in their own governments these Islamic principles that are forced on people through the use of laws or violence,” Gabbard said.

The big mainstream media outlets like the Times weren’t talking about Gabbard’s warning last year, but other people across the nation have been and are now talking and acting.

As The Washington Stand recently reported, the newly organized Sharia-Free America Caucus in the House of Representatives was announced the same week as Gabbard’s address but has since quickly swelled its membership to 43 Members, an unusually swift recruitment success. That success came despite, Co-Chairman Keth Self (R-Texas) told The Washington Stand, the fact that he “hasn’t even made a complete pitch yet.”

Among those joining the caucus was Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), whose district stretches from Oklahoma’s southern border almost to the far-North Dallas suburbs. Gill, in an interview with TWS, pointed to Ndiaga Diagne, the naturalized U.S. citizen from Senegal who murdered three people and wounded more than a dozen in Austin, Texas, in the early morning hours of March 1.

“That was somebody who clearly had no business being in America, who was wearing a sweatshirt that said ‘Property of Allah’ and a tee-shirt with an Iranian flag, who was clearly an Islamist terrorist. The American people are waking up and saying why in the world are these people in my community,” Gill said.

“The problem is across the country, and there are particular epicenters that include the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Minnesota, and then a few other localities and states, but this is fundamentally an immigration issue that needs to be tackled on the federal level,” Gill continued.

Traditionally, American immigration policy required new arrivals to assimilate fully, to adopt and support this country’s political principles of freedom of speech and religion, learn the language, and become independent productive citizens.

“That hasn’t happened for a long time,” Gill said. “Political Islam is incompatible with the American way of life. We should not be importing people from the Islamic world. It is idiotic and suicidal.”

Gill deferred when asked if he would support federal legislation that would ban residential developments like the massive The Meadows/EPIC City and others like it elsewhere that are designed, marketed, and sold as Muslim-only jurisdictions in which Sharia law is intended to replace every other legal authority.

“I think there are a lot of things that you can do, but again, the root problem is immigration, making sure that people coming here adhere to ideologies that are assimilable, as opposed to unassimilable worldviews like Islam. But I do think there are real problems with creating Islamic cities within our own country, creating these parallel societies that adhere to Sharia legal codes. The federal government has a clear role in banning Sharia law,” he said.

Asked if it’s feasible to seek such an outcome in the current political atmosphere, Gill said that is the purpose of the Sharia-Free America Caucus, and he pointed to the rapid accumulation of more than 40 members.

“Getting 40 congressmen on board with any particular policy is a big step in the right direction, especially this early in the game. I do think there is a political path to that, but it is something we are going to have to continue pushing hard for,” he said.

Asked about reports of growing numbers of Muslim candidates seeking local public offices in Texas, Gill said he was told recently by a constituent. “We ought to be aware that it’s happening everywhere. I can tell you in my district in one of the small towns, one of the very small towns, I was speaking to a city official in the past three weeks who was telling me they’ve got issues where there are Islamic centers popping up and who are wanting to blast calls to prayer. This is in rural North Texas. This isn’t big-city Dallas, this is happening everywhere and the time to stop it is now,” Gill declared.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Iranian Aggression Angers Neighbors to Join U.S. Coalition

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

The U.S. State Department on Monday urged American citizens to “depart now” from all 14 countries between Iran and Egypt as Iran expanded the scope of conflict with indiscriminate missile strikes on all its neighbors. But the strategy seems to have backfired by reminding a reluctant world just why the United States and Israel want to replace the rogue Iranian regime. “Many people in the Gulf woke up Saturday [angry] at the United States and Israel and went to sleep [angry] at Iran,” summarized Atlantic Council Director of Middle East Programs William Wechsler.

Iran has attacked nearly every neighbor to the west and south, enraging them in a conflict it could have limited to just Israel and the United States.

In Bahrain, Iran struck the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Manama, wounding two personnel with the Department of Defense, as well as an Amazon web center. In Kuwait, where Iran killed six U.S. servicemembers, an Iranian drone also crashed into the country’s main airport, injuring several employees. In Oman, Iranian drones hit a fuel tank at the Duqm commercial port, injuring one worker.

In Qatar, Iran targeted the Doha airport, the country’s LNG (liquefied natural gas) facilities, a power plant’s water tank, and another energy installation, leaving at least eight wounded. And these were only the known targets. On March 1, the Qatari defense ministry detected 65 ballistic missiles and 12 drones incoming from Iran in several waves, and it successfully intercepted all but two missiles and one drone, as well as shooting down two Iranian fighter jets that entered its airspace.

The United Arab Emirates, one of Iran’s closest neighbors, received the worst assault. Iran has directed 189 missiles and 941 drones at its territory, of which the UAE intercepted 175 missiles (another 13 fell into the sea) and 876 drones. Shrapnel from the destroyed ordnance resulted in three fatalities among three foreign workers employed at an Emirati port. The targets of these attacks included a warehouse at Al Salam Naval Base in Abu Dhabi, which hosts French forces, the U.S. consulate in Dubai, the Fairmont Palm Hotel in Dubai, Zayed International Airport, and two Amazon data centers. Shrapnel from intercepted projectiles also hit Dubai International Airport and the Burj Al Arab hotel.

Thus, Iran heavily targeted all the tiny nations around the Persian Gulf, but the rogue regime did not stop there. In Saudi Arabia, Iran targeted the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, as well as the Saudi kingdom’s largest oil refinery in two separate attacks. In Syria, a missile launched by Iran killed four after the new regime criticized Iran’s aggression but not the American assault. In Jordan, a “vital target” was attacked by a swarm of drones launched by an Iranian proxy militia in Iraq.

All these attacks grievously provoked Iran’s neighbors, who previously had little reason or inclination to tangle with Iran. On Sunday, the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman) called an emergency session where they pledged to “take all necessary measures to defend their security and stability and to protect their territories, citizens, and residents, including the option of responding to the aggression.”

“They want to fight,” President Donald Trump declared Monday. “They were going to be very little involved, and now they insist on being involved.”

The UAE, in particular, is contemplating military action after Iran fired more than 1,000 missiles at its territory. Its foreign ministry proclaimed that the “UAE retains its right to self-defense,” although it “has not taken any decision to alter its defensive posture in response to the repeated Iranian attacks.”

Qatar, too, was highly displeased. “All the red lines have already been crossed,” declared foreign ministry spokesman Majed al Ansari. “The attacks on our sovereignty are constant. There are attacks on infrastructure. There are attacks on our residential areas. And the effects of these attacks are very clear. When it comes to possible retaliation, all options are with our leadership. But we have to make it very clear that attacks like these will not go unanswered and cannot go unanswered.”

For now, Qatar has arrested two espionage cells of operatives from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including seven people who gathered intelligence and three assigned to conduct sabotage activities.

Even Pakistan, although not attacked by Iran, may become embroiled in the conflict due to a mutual defense pact it signed with Saudi Arabia in September.

These Arab nations have many options for siding with the U.S. against Iran that come short of engaging in acts of war with their larger neighbor. For example, they could allow American forces to use their bases for attacks on Iran, bringing American firepower closer to the target.

Now “that Iran has haphazardly struck the Gulf partners,” said retired Brigadier General John Teichert on “Washington Watch,” “not only are the Gulf partners defending themselves and potentially starting to be engaged in strike packages, but they are allowing our fighter aircraft to launch from their countries, which means that, instead of traveling a thousand miles to strike targets, they’re only traveling a couple hundred miles. And all of that mass of our capability is now starting to truly come to bear against the Iranian regime.”

A similar pattern was evident in the response of European nations. Originally, not even the United Kingdom would allow American forces based in its territory to participate in the attack. But, after Iran attacked a Kuwaiti air base used by Italy, an Emirati naval base used by France, and even a British air base in Cyprus, European powers reversed course, with the U.K. allowing the U.S. to use its bases, France declaring itself ready to defend the Gulf countries, and tiny Greece sending forces to defend Cyprus. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen even called for regime change, saying “a credible transition in Iran is urgently needed.”

One outlier is Spain, which still refuses to let the U.S. attack Iran from its military bases. In addition, France has agreed to work with China on de-escalating the conflict with Iran, which is a bit like the anti-Semites calling for a “ceasefire now” on the day after Hamas’s October 7 attack. The only thing “de-escalation” will achieve right now is saving the Islamist regime from internal overthrow — an outcome that is strange for ultra-secular France to seek.

Another outlier is Turkey, the only NATO member whose land area crosses into Asia. Yet, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan increasingly radicalizes the nation in an imperial, Islamic, and anti-Israel ideology, the nation looks more and more like Iran and less and less like a U.S. ally, even to the point of hosting Hamas terrorists. Erdogan declared himself “saddened to learn of the passing of Iran’s Supreme Leader” and criticized the U.S. attack as a “clear violation of international law.”

Despite hosting U.S. bases and holding a land border with Iran, Turkey managed to avoid any incoming ordnance from Iran over the first several days. By Wednesday, some articles began to notice Turkey’s apparent immunity. Hours later, NATO air defenses intercepted a missile that crossed over Iraq and Syria into Turkish airspace.

Whether the Iranian attack on Turkey was an expansion of its aggression or an attempt to help Turkey cover its attacks, the assault represented the most recent attack yet on the home territory of a NATO member country, potentially triggering the NATO treaty’s mutual defense articles.

“We condemn Iran’s targeting of Turkiye,” NATO spokeswoman Allison Hart said Wednesday. “NATO stands firmly with all Allies, including Turkiye, as Iran continues its indiscriminate attacks across the region. Our deterrence and defense posture remains strong across all domains, including when it comes to air and missile defense.”

Last Saturday, the U.S. and Israel could not even count on the support of close allies in their initial attack on Iran. Now, Iran’s indiscriminate attacks on civilian and infrastructure targets in nearly all the neighboring countries have turned the region against it, reminding even Arab nations that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a bad actor. The result appears to be uniting these Arab nations on the side of Israel and the United States and against Iran, a result that would have been unthinkable even several years ago.

In brief, Iran’s retaliatory attacks on all its neighbors have made Operation Epic Fury much easier for the United States, a best-case scenario for the Trump administration it could hardly have predicted.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Purim Repeat: Israel Turns the Tables on Persian Ruler Who Sought Their Annihilation

South Sudan Teeters on the Brink of Civil War after Murderous Rampage

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Iran’s Horrors Take Shape in the Emotional Accounts of Dozens of Doctors and Nurses

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

“I saw scenes that would have brought any other human being to their knees.” — General practitioner, Tehran

When the missiles started raining down on Iran Saturday, there was a sense of urgency for people to get to safety, yes, but there was also another overriding emotion for many: relief. The show of force by the U.S. and Israel was the violent answer to countless prayers offered up since January, when leaders massacred thousands of innocents to stop the wave of anti-regime protests gripping the country. Most of the nation had started to worry that the bloodbath would go unpunished by the world. They were wrong.

No one will ever know the true depth of suffering the country endured under the cover of Iran’s communications blackout, but the testimonies that have started to emerge from the brave men and women on the ground are starting to put the horrifying pieces of those weeks together — pieces, some say, of “one of the worst mass killings in contemporary world history.”

Worried that no one would believe the nightmare unfolding across Iran’s provinces earlier this year, a medical worker in Rasht risked his life to smuggle information out of the country and to The New York Times. After working four days in the trauma center, he went home and “instead of sleeping, he began compiling 11 gigabytes of X-rays, CT scans, and medical records, later sending them to us on an encrypted messaging app,” Roxana Saberi and Fatemeh write in their sobering piece. “They want to sweep it under the rug,” he cautioned them.

When the regime cut off the internet, covering their crimes in a blanket of darkness, most of the world had no idea the true scale of evil that had been unleashed on the Iranian people in the bloody crackdown that followed, the Times notes. “But the doctors and nurses did.”

In a powerful collection of eye-witness accounts from hospitals and emergency rooms across 14 cities, a common theme of horror emerges — one that makes this past weekend’s attacks feel like the justice Iran has been waiting for.

One by one, the doctors talked about the “extreme distress, including nightmares, flashbacks, grief, anger, and anxiety” they’d experienced from the grisly scenes they can’t unsee. Some confess they’ve become suicidal. “As a doctor,” one said, “I could not come to terms with the fact that so many warlike injuries were inflicted on my own people on the streets of my own city.”

The same pain echoed across the medical landscape. “Our hospital is a small facility,” a general practitioner from Isfahan described. “We had never had trauma patients before. We were not prepared to handle this number of injured people. Handle them? Even the cleaning staff could not collect the blood from the hospital floor — it was that much. I was walking through blood. I still smell blood in my nose.”

The inability to keep up with the savagery was a common theme. “The hospital corridors were full of bloodied people. All the hallways and walls were covered in blood,” a medical worker from Shiraz remembers. “I saw exposure of the brain and abdominal organs, amputation and dismemberment, multiple knife and machete blows, pellet wounds, and bullet entry and exit sites.” The number of injured was so high, others pointed out, that they tried calling every doctor and nurse they knew to come help, but it was no use. “About 15 minutes later, the phones were cut off. There were almost no orderlies or assistants, no IV fluids, no IV starter packs, and no IV poles. No one expected this volume, and it took a long time until supplies were made available,” a trauma doctor lamented.

The sheer number of patients — “from a nine-year-old child to a 70-year-old man” — a nurse from the Tehran province said, was overwhelming. “A single eye surgeon might perform 10 major surgeries like this in their entire career,” an ophthalmologist told the reporters, “but we performed thousands of surgeries of this kind. Another issue was the severity of the injuries — mostly intended to blind. We had many cases involving both eyes.” One man was beaten so severely that his eyes had come out of their sockets.

An ER doctor grieved the number of patients who died just because the phones were cut off. “We had no access to surgical or anesthesia support.” And they continued to be shocked by the waves of gruesome injuries flooding their hallways. “A shotgun is for hunting animals — it has logic in that context. It is not an anti-riot weapon. And even if it were, it would be for shooting at the legs, not the face and head,” an ophthalmologist insisted. “I saw shots to the head and neck, shots from behind, shots to the genitals, injuries from being shot from about one meter away, and severe stab wound injuries,” one nurse from Tehran recounted. “Many people had their arms or legs amputated, many suffered spinal cord injuries or paralysis, many also went blind.”

These were the kinds of wounds that one surgical worker said they would have expected to witness “in a face-to-face war with a foreign enemy — not during domestic protests.” The memories that replay in their minds are of the hundreds of children who died agonizing deaths. “A breastfeeding mother was holding her baby when security forces opened fire on their car,” a doctor from South Tehran told Saberi and Jamalpour. “They arrived at the hospital in that same vehicle, riddled with bullets. The bullet passed through the baby’s hand and into the mother’s chest.”

There was a pattern, others shudder, of children being shot in the head — a fact that Tehran’s hospital workers confirmed. “The number of children killed by sniper fire or heavy machine gun fire was high,” a doctor in the province said sorrowfully. “These scenes replay in front of my mind maybe eight or nine times a day, and I see them all, both when I’m awake and when I sleep,” a Rasht staffer admits.

“I feel like it was a nightmare or a dream,” one ER doctor agonized. “The worst scene was keeping the bodies in one room. Hours later, their mobile phones would ring, and we would cry outside the room.”

But it wasn’t as if the hospitals and trauma centers were safe. “Many of the doctors and nurses told us they went to great lengths to prevent the Iranian authorities from identifying their patients as protesters — for example, by falsifying their medical records, erasing security camera footage or treating them in private homes. They were worried their patients could be abducted or even killed,” the reporters explained. “Doing so put the medical workers themselves in danger. Many reported that they or their co-workers had been threatened, interrogated or summoned to appear before the authorities. Several said they had colleagues who had been detained.”

Some got threatening texts from anonymous numbers they didn’t recognize. In Shiraz, medical staff said later, “Several plainclothes agents in the emergency department were threatening to kill the injured and the doctors.” One was arrested after talking to the Times, his family informed the outlet.

It was very clear that “security forces were trying to identify the wounded,” an anonymous source in Rasht said. “For those who had a bank card or any form of identification, they would take a photo of it and write down the information in the notebook. For those who had no ID, they would photograph their faces with a professional camera, likely to use later to arrest them.” Eventually, people just vanished. “I witnessed bodies disappearing at the hospital,” one general practitioner reported.

Together, all of these doctors and nurses broke their silence and risked their lives to plead for one thing — help. “They are asking the world not to look away.”

Fortunately for Iran, the Trump administration did not. Finally, the haunting images and stories these people carry with them from these terror-filled weeks and years are being avenged. This is the reckoning the country’s tyrants deserve, the witnesses of Iran’s brutality argue. “I don’t want them to get away with this. I want them to be punished. I don’t want all the blood to go unanswered,” one ER doctor argued passionately. A nurse agreed. “Every night, I fall asleep hoping for the freedom of Iran.” It was and is, she insisted, “the hope of those killed, wounded, or detained.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: After U.S. Strike against Iran’s Islamist Leadership, Questions Remain about Who Will Fill the Vacuum

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

House GOPers Flock to New Sharia-Free America Caucus as Politicos’ Awareness of Islamization Problem Grows

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

Three more House Republicans have joined the newly organized Sharia-Free America Caucus in the lower chamber of Congress, bringing the total membership to 43 after a mere two months since the legislative group’s formation was announced by GOP Representatives Keith Self and Chip Roy of Texas.

Rep. Michael Rulli (R) of Ohio, Rep. August Pfluger (R) of Texas, and Rep. Buddy Carter (R) of Georgia are the latest additions to the caucus that was first made public on Christmas Day 2025. Twenty-four House Republicans joined the caucus within its first month of existence, and it has continued adding members throughout the month of February.

Asked by The Washington Stand if he expects more House Members to join the new caucus, Self said, “Oh, absolutely. I haven’t even made a complete pitch. I’ve tried a couple of times, but things intervened. Just with the Texas delegation, we’ve got 25 Republicans, so I absolutely expect it to grow.”

The caucus was formed in response to growing concerns in Congress and elsewhere about the recent surge in efforts by Muslim activists around the country to establish developments offered exclusively to followers of Islam and to replace America’s local, state, and federal laws with Sharia law.

Sharia law is the civil and religious commands prescribed by the Quran to regulate public and private life. Among much else, Sharia sanctions Muslim husbands treating wives as slaves, justifies Islamic men who rape non-Islamic women, requires the death penalty for those who identify as homosexual, death by stoning for adulterers, and forces non-Muslims to convert or face death by beheading.

“Under Sharia law, there is no freedom of speech, religion, or women’s rights. Europe should be a wake-up call to America, showing what the spread of Sharia law looks like. America’s immigration system must brace to take on this battle, not only to preserve our constitutional republic but to take charge in the spiritual warfare and defend our Judeo-Christian values,” Roy declared recently.

In recent years, the Lone Star State has become a focal point for the growing Muslim presence. Developers of a massive Muslim-only combined residential and commercial complex near Dallas, initially known as EPIC City, recently opted to change the project’s name to “The Meadows” following public backlash in response to reports that Sharia law would exclusively govern residents there.

When asked by TWS why he joined the caucus, Carter replied, “Sharia law is a direct threat to freedom and the American way of life. This radical, Third-World ideology is poisonous and has no place in the United States. If we import the Third World, we become the Third World. Immigrants who are welcomed into our country must assimilate, not bring their toxic and violent beliefs with them. Georgians want to preserve our nation’s values, not destroy them.”

Rep. Josh Brecheen (R) of Oklahoma, who was among the earliest members of the caucus, told TWS he joined because “we must not allow Oklahoma to be lulled to sleep by a people who, under the deceitful guise of peace and tolerance, have infiltrated our nation. Americans must be made aware that, in strict adherence to the Quran, its extremist followers are directed to kill all infidels and apostates, meaning anyone who doesn’t believe as they do. In tandem, extremist followers advocate for Sharia law to be implemented in our nation.”

Brecheen added that he is “grateful to the group of Oklahoma state lawmakers who are introducing bills to ban Sharia at the state level and to curb foreign influence in our state. For my part, I am committed to preventing Sharia from being spread in our federal jurisdictions, as this code of law is inherently at odds with the American way of life.”

Despite its short existence, the caucus has been unusually active since being announced. In addition to a February 5 news conference, Roy chaired a February 11 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government that heard from four witnesses explaining why “Political Islam and Sharia Law are Incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.”

One of the witnesses, Krista Shields, Texas State Director for the RAIR Foundation, told the hearing that the rapid growth today of efforts to establish Muslim-only communities in America, in which Sharia law takes precedence over every other legal system, is a direct result of planning by radical Islamic extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Shields cited two documents as being of particular importance.

“First, a document titled ‘Towards a Global Strategy for Islamic Policy,’ largely known as ‘The Project,’ was a 12-point master plan detailing the ‘westward expansion’ of the Muslim Brotherhood. The document was seized by Swiss authorities shortly after 9/11 as the ‘formalized output’ of a 1977 meeting of exiled Muslim Brotherhood leaders. The document details a strategy of ‘institutional action’ designed to ‘penetrate’ social services and ‘control’ local centers of power, explicitly rejecting assimilation in favor of a ‘parallel’ existence governed by an ‘Islamic Constitution’ and ‘Islamic laws.’”

The second document cited by Shield was the 1991 Explanatory Memorandum, which she told the subcommittee was “entered [as] evidence in U.S. federal courts, [and] declares their mission in America: ‘The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process.’… The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.’ Groups like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and their many proxies — including those operating in America — aim to impose Sharia worldwide and establish a global Caliphate.”

Another witness — veteran Islamic terrorism expert Robert Spencer — explained to subcommittee members that “immigration to a new land to bring Sharia to it is also an Islamic imperative. The Quran promises a reward from Allah to those who ‘emigrate for the sake of Allah,’ which means for the purpose of bringing Sharia to a non-Muslim land. Thus, the conflict between Sharia and the U.S. Constitution will only grow as the Muslim population in the U.S. grows, for among that population will always be some Muslims who take these imperatives with the utmost seriousness.”

Rep. Mary Scanlon (D-Pa.), the subcommittee’s ranking member, dismissed the hearing, accusing Roy and other Republicans of “stoking fear and suspicion of fellow Americans or anyone else on the explicit basis of their religious beliefs” and described GOP warnings about the suppression by Sharia law of all other beliefs as merely “hysterical rhetoric.”

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

US Evacuates Embassy Amid Rising Tensions With Iran

Iranian Students’ Renewed Anti-Regime And Anti-Khamenei Protests At Universities: Burning The Regime Flag And Khamenei’s Portrait, Chanting Praise For Reza Pahlavi

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Fear of Islamization of U.S. Sparks a Sharia-Free America Caucus in Congress

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

Forty Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives are joining forces in a new congressional caucus to combat what they view as a rapidly growing movement pushing for the Islamization of America as is happening in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

Rep. Keith Self and Rep. Chip Roy, both of Texas, are co-founders of the Sharia-Free America Caucus that seeks to focus public and official attention and action on the multiple ways that the Islamization movement is making rapid progress in establishing large city-scaled developments exclusively available to Muslims transplanted to the U.S. from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

“The American way of life is under siege by radicals from a culture waging war against our Constitution and Western values. We’ve seen what happens when nations allow this infiltration: countries like France and England are on the verge of losing their identity and sovereignty. The same forces are at play here in America today, and if we don’t stop them, they will conquer our country too,” Self said in announcing the formation of the new caucus.

“America is facing a threat that directly attacks our Constitution and our Western values: the spread of Sharia law. From Texas to every state in this constitutional republic, instances of Sharia adherents masquerading as ‘refugees’ — and in many cases, sleeper cells connected to terrorist organizations — are threatening the American way of life. Those who succumb to this political ideology seek to replace our legal system and Constitution,” Roy said in the same announcement.

“Under Sharia law, there is no freedom of speech, religion, or women’s rights. Europe should be a wake-up call to America, showing what the spread of Sharia law looks like. America’s immigration system must brace to take on this battle, not only to preserve our constitutional republic but to take charge in the spiritual warfare and defend our Judeo-Christian values,” Roy continued.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R) of Minnesota is among the members joining the caucus. Emmer’s decision to join the caucus came amid growing national attention focused on the likelihood that Somali Muslims living in Minnesota were involved in a systematic defrauding of state and federal social service and other taxpayer programs at a cost of $9 billion or more.

“Sharia is completely incompatible with the American way of life and threatens the very fabric of our society. It is radical, oppressive, and must never be allowed to gain a foothold in America. I’m thankful to Congressmen Roy and Self for leading this noble charge in the House and looking forward to working together to combat this danger,” Emmer said in a January statement.

Members of the new caucus have introduced legislation designed to halt and reverse the current momentum of Islamization efforts in this country. Rep. Randy Fine (R) of Florida’s H.R. 5512, the No Sharia Act, insists the bill “would restrict courts from enforcing any judgment, decree, or arbitration that relies on Islamic law or any foreign system that violates constitutional rights,” according to Self’s initial announcement of the group’s formation.

Roy’s H.R. 5722, the Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act, is written to “prevent foreign nationals who adhere to Sharia from entering or staying in the U.S.” The Texas Republican’s H.R. 6225, the PAUSE Act, would freeze the immigration system until major reforms can be enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president.

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville’s (R) S. 3008 and S. 3009 are the Senate versions of the No Sharia Act and the Preserving Sharia-Free America Act.

Representatives from 19 states have flocked to join the caucus, while both co-founders and eight other GOP members of the Texas congressional delegation are members of the caucus, thanks in great part because the Lone Star State has become in recent years a focal point for the growing Muslim presence.

Developers of a massive Muslim-only combined residential and commercial complex near Dallas, initially known as EPIC City, recently opted to change the project’s name to “The Meadows” following public backlash in response to reports that Sharia law would exclusively govern residents there.

Sharia law is the civil and religious law prescribed by the Koran to regulate public and private life. Among much else, Sharia sanctions husbands treating wives as slaves, justifies Islamic men who rape non-Islamic women, requires the death penalty for those who identify as homosexual and death by stoning for adulterers, and forces non-Muslims to convert or face death by beheading.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) signed into law last year a measure designed to prevent housing developments with religion-based segregation of acceptable buyers.

“One of the issues at stake is the freedom of religion,” Abbott said. “Another issue at stake is what’s called the right to contract. The fact is, religious freedom is a central part of the Texas Constitution. But bad actors like EPIC and EPIC City tried to use religion as a form of segregation. We will ensure that we have the laws and law enforcement in place to prevent attempts to build such discriminatory compounds in the state of Texas.”

But critics of the Abbott measure point out that projects like The Meadows continue moving forward.

Independent investigative journalist Amy Mek, for example, describes Texas as “ground zero” in the Islamization process and “Islam’s top U.S. target and epicenter for settlement, enclaves, and long-term dominance.” As evidence for her description, Mek claims there are “over 330 mosques expanding rapidly” across the state, more than 650 “Islamic nonprofits operating here — more than any other state,” and a proliferation within the financial community of “Sharia-compliant finance” policies.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Iran’s Ayatollah Is Facing Defeat instead of Admitting Failure

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Time is running out for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his repressive regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, a unique window of opportunity for the Iranian people opens next week, and the Trump administration is likely preparing to lend support this time before the window closes yet again.

Like he did in early 2025, President Donald Trump is giving Iran a limited opportunity to negotiate a satisfactory solution. As in 2025, however, Iran has shown no signs of negotiating in good faith, indicating its reluctance to fully surrender their nuclear program and refusal to discuss a ballistic missile program that is an existential threat to Israel and a malign proxy network that has destabilized the region for decades.

The strategy of suppressing at home and threatening abroad has been an abject failure. Yet despite their weakness, the ayatollah and his loyalists appear more willing to face defeat than admit failure.

The United States and its allies and partners in the region have had a month to marshal offensive resources and array defensive measures. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is using the same negotiating playbook of stalling, threatening, and avoiding while the possibility of strikes against them looms large.

Trading away their nuclear program would be to admit failure, and that is a bridge too far for a regime whose pride may be the only thing more motivating than its own survival. The Iranian nuclear program has been the centerpiece of the conceit of Iran’s leaders, worthy of up to a half trillion dollars of investment and opportunity cost. Even though the program was largely turned to rubble in one night last June by seven American B-2s, trading it away would acknowledge that the ayatollah and his loyalists have wasted the well-being of the Iranian people and squandered their future.

Next week, the 17th and the 18th of February specifically, mark the end of the 40-day mourning period for the thousands — if not tens of thousands — of protestors who were ruthlessly slaughtered by the Iranian regime in early January. Reports indicate that there is a surge of dissatisfaction simmering among the Iranian people, and these mourning people will uniquely combine large crowds with powerful passion. The United States is properly postured to support the protestors this time around and may see strikes as a catalyst to allow the bubbling frustration to burst forth yet again.

The preparations by the United States for such a situation are made even more evident by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House this week. A visit that had been scheduled for next week has been accelerated, indicating that preparations made next week may be too late. That the prime minister is bringing along his incoming air chief, an atypical plus-one for such a strategic meeting, is a telling indication of operational planning. Thus, the United States and Israel are telegraphing strategic steps that indicate a looming military operation.

Finally, President Trump’s credibility is on the line. After claims that the United States is “locked and loaded” — on top of presidential promises to protestors that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY” — Iran has blatantly exceeded Trump’s red lines. Without an active response that supports his claims, Trump realizes that his legacy will include a condemning asterisk of weakness. He is unlikely to allow such a blemish on his record.

Next week offers an opportunity where geopolitical pretext meets military preparation. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime negotiates in bad faith, creating a situation where they would rather face defeat instead of admitting failure. By using the same failed negotiating tactics, the repressive regime in Iran should expect the same ruinous outcome from a year ago, this time accompanied by a defeat that may allow the Iranian people to finally shed their repressive regime.

AUTHOR

John Teichert

United States Air Force Brig. General (Ret.) John Teichert is a leading expert on foreign affairs and military strategy. He served as commander of Joint Base Andrews and Edwards Air Force Base, was the U.S. senior defense official to Iraq, and recently retired as the assistant deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs.

RELATED VIDEO: BEYOND RECKONING: U.S. Total Supremacy over Iran

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

U.S. Expands Footprint in Nigeria, Sends 200 Troops for Anti-Terror Training

/in , , , , , , , , /by

The U.S. military announced Tuesday that it would send 200 servicemembers to the embattled African nation of Nigeria to help train Nigerian troops to fight Islamist terrorists, who have murdered tens of thousands of Christians and other religious practitioners in the country over the last two decades.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the troops will join several U.S. servicemen already stationed in Nigeria to “help local forces use intelligence to identify targets for military strikes.” Specifically, the U.S. troops will reportedly train Nigerian forces to coordinate the risky military tactic of “simultaneous air and infantry operations.” However, a spokesman for Nigeria’s armed forces made it clear that the U.S. forces will not be involved in any direct combat operations. He went on to say that the Nigerian government had requested America’s assistance.

The announcement came seven weeks after the U.S. fired over a dozen missiles from an offshore warship at two alleged jihadist camps in Nigeria run by the Islamic State. While it was never confirmed how many terrorists were killed in the attack, a Nigerian military spokesman stated, “I can confirm the intent was achieved.” The strike was likewise launched at the request of Nigeria’s government.

The surge in U.S. military activity in Nigeria has come amid burgeoning genocidal violence against the Christian population of the country by several Islamist jihadi groups, including Boko Haram, Islamic State in West Africa Province, Fulani, and others. As noted recently by Across Nigeria Founder Brad Brandon during “Washington Watch,” 72% of all Christians killed across the globe in 2025 took place in northern Nigeria. Experts estimate that upwards of 60,000 Christians have been murdered in the country since 2009, far and away the largest total of any nation in the world over that time frame. In addition, Nigerian sources estimate that jihadists have murdered approximately 29,000 non-fundamentalist Muslims.

A renewed focus on the crisis emerged last November when President Trump declared the ongoing deadly attacks on Christians in Nigeria to be a “genocide” and threatened to send U.S. troops into the country “guns-a-blazing” to eradicate Islamist terrorists. He also threatened to significantly cut aid to the country if Nigeria’s government “continues to allow the killing of Christians,” with his administration declaring the nation a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) in November. Since then, it appears the Trump administration has settled on the strategy of direct military cooperation with the African nation.

But will the strategy successfully rid Nigeria of Islamist jihadists? Experts like Lt. Col. (Ret.) Bob Maginnis, who serves as senior fellow for National Security at Family Research Council, say that the strategy strikes a sensible medium.

“The decision to send 200 U.S. troops to Nigeria for training purposes — while avoiding direct combat — reflects a familiar and cautious approach,” he told The Washington Stand. “It signals support without plunging America into another open-ended conflict. The December missile strike against Islamic State camps reinforced that message: we are willing to act against terrorist infrastructure, but we are reluctant to expand our footprint.”

“Is that enough?” Maginnis continued. “From a military standpoint, training and targeted strikes can help. Nigeria’s armed forces face a complex threat environment: jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province operate across difficult terrain, exploit porous borders, and prey upon vulnerable rural communities — many of them Christian. Professionalizing Nigerian units, improving intelligence fusion, logistics, and air-ground coordination can strengthen Abuja’s capacity to protect its own citizens.”

At the same time, Maginnis argued that the U.S. should take a more consistent approach to fighting Christian persecution worldwide in order to build credibility. “Nigeria has been one of the epicenters of anti-Christian violence, especially in Africa. Villages are attacked, clergy kidnapped, congregations massacred. Persecution of Christians is not isolated or declining; it is expanding geographically and intensifying in severity. What we see in Nigeria is part of a broader global pattern — from parts of the Middle East to communist regimes like China, where state-driven repression seeks to subordinate or silence Christian witness.”

As to the question of whether the U.S. should take more direct military action, Maginnis contended that “we must begin with clarity. The U.S. should support nations that are genuinely committed to defeating jihadist violence and protecting vulnerable populations, including Christians. Training missions, intelligence sharing, and carefully calibrated strikes can be appropriate tools when tied to measurable reforms and accountability. But ‘boots on the ground’ in a combat role is another matter entirely. Nigeria is a sovereign state with a large military. The primary burden must rest with its government.”

He further recommended continuing “training and advisory support for Nigerian forces conditioned on demonstrated commitment to protecting civilians” and “targeted counterterrorism strikes when actionable intelligence identifies terrorist infrastructure,” as well as upping “diplomatic pressure on Abuja to address corruption, impunity, and sectarian bias within its own security services.”

“Expanding into large-scale U.S. combat deployments would risk repeating past mistakes,” Maginnis advised. “But retreating into symbolic gestures while persecution spreads would also be a failure. The United States cannot solve every conflict. It can, however, choose integrity. If we are serious about combating Islamist terrorism in Nigeria, we must also be serious about confronting persecution wherever it occurs — without fear, favor, or double standards.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.