Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Tuesday’s Final Word – HotAir

March 3, 2026
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Tuesday’s Final Word – HotAir
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All in all, it’s just another tab in the wall … 





Ed: Who is Kamala Harris?Just another of the long line of establishment appeasers. Had we elected Harris, the Iranians would have a nuclear warhead by now, and likely would have deployed it. They were close in June 2025; a few more weeks and it would have been a fait accompli.

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David Harsanyi: If one of your national slogans is “Death to America,” you should be living in persistent and paralyzing fear of the United States.

Say what you will about President Donald Trump, America’s enemies aren’t making any more demands after Operation Epic Fury. Not after the president shattered nearly five decades of Washington foreign policy appeasing, legitimizing, and emboldening the Iranian regime, one of our most enduring and dangerous enemies. …

Trump has already reset American foreign policy by rejecting both the technocratic naivety of neoconservatism and the unfeasible demands of isolationism. He has also shed the convoluted, pseudointellectual foreign policy theories that had congealed as conventional Washington wisdom.

One of the bogus “norms” propagated by experts, and now “America First” isolationists, is that any military action needs to be contingent on short-term “imminent” threats against the U.S.

Ed: Like CDR Salamander yesterday, I’m willing to embrace the strategy of the “punitive expedition,” as long as the punitive phase is existential for the hostile regime in question. The Iranian threat wasn’t just “imminent” anyway. It has been active for 47 years, and we have exhausted literally every other option besides this plan and a full-scale invasion. Let’s see what a punitive expedition can accomplish. It will result in fewer regimes chanting “Death to America,” for sure, and that itself is a good thing. 





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Ed: I wrote about that last night. The point applies equally well today. Democrats don’t object to the war or the precedent; they just object to Trump. 

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Donald Trump on Truth Social: Effective IMMEDIATELY, I have ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide, at a very reasonable price, political risk insurance and guarantees for the Financial Security of ALL Maritime Trade, especially Energy, traveling through the Gulf. This will be available to all Shipping Lines. If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible. No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD. The United States’ ECONOMIC and MILITARY MIGHT is the GREATEST ON EARTH — More actions to come. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Ed: This might unlock some traffic that’s stuck in and around the Persian Gulf and stabilize the oil markets. It’s not clear yet whether Trump can do this without an appropriation from Congress. However, he certainly can order more naval resources into the Strait of Hormuz for escort duty, and that will matter more than the insurance. 

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Ed: And Emmanuel Macron was no DeGaulle either, at least until today. Macron finally ordered a carrier task force into the eastern Mediterranean to help counter Iran’s drone warfare. Relationships will be much different after this chapter in the Western alliance. 

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Haviv Rettig Gur at The Free Press: This is not a war about Israel. This is not a war for Israel’s sake. Israel is a beneficiary, a capable and willing local partner, but it is not the reason America is in this fight. America is playing a much bigger game, about more than what happens in the Middle East. The subtext, that Israel exercises outsize influence or “drags Americans into wars they don’t want,” borders on the conspiratorial.

This isn’t one war, but two. There is a regional chessboard, on which Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the other Gulf states all play. Iran’s proxies, its drones and ballistic missiles, its nuclear ambitions, its funding of Hezbollah and the Houthis: All of that belongs primarily to this smaller game. Israel has always understood this board. So have the Saudis. So has everyone in the neighborhood.

But there is a second chessboard, vastly larger, on which the United States and China are the primary players. On this board, the central question of the next 30 years is being worked out: whether the American-led global order survives, or whether China displaces it. Every significant American foreign policy decision, from the pivot to Asia to the tariff wars to the posture in the Pacific, is ultimately a move on this board.

America is in this fight because of China. Specifically, it is about dismantling the most significant Chinese forward base outside of East Asia.





Ed: Read it all. I will cover some of this tomorrow, but Gur really drives the point home. China has already lost its bases in Venezuela and Panama, both of which existed to contain American power. This is a global chessboard, not a regional one. 

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Ed: China has put significant resources into a morale-sapping propaganda/ activist campaign. They know they are being humiliated, and this is all they can do about it. 

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AFP: Tehran feels like a ghost town, with residents who have not fled remaining shut away in their homes for fear of new explosions from the US-Israeli bombardment. …

The Iranian capital is normally home to some 10 million people, but in recent days “there are so few people that you’d think no one ever lived here”, she added.

Powerful explosions rocked Tehran for the fourth day running on Tuesday, sending thick clouds of grey smoke into the blue sky, AFP journalists said.

“Last night, we slept on the floor with our heads protected in the middle of the apartment”, as far as possible from the windows in the bedroom and the ones in the living room, said 50-year-old Amir, “just to be safe in case the shockwaves shattered the glass”.

Still, “my wife insists that we stay to see what happens”, he added.

Ed: This is an unfortunate outcome of the arrogance of the mullahs. They never built shelters in Tehran for people outside of the ruling clique, and egress from the capital is now hopelessly overloaded. The US and Israel use precision targeting and try to keep collateral damage to a minimum, so perhaps staying put is the best choice. Hopefully, the people who do stay choose to rise up when the moment comes. 





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Jeffries said Iran is “very different” & told me “I don’t even understand the genesis or basis of that question…not suggesting you’re asking it in bad faith.”

When I pointed out that the Libya bombing campaign went on for 7 months, (and also included a no-fly zone), Jeffries said he wasn’t in Congress at the time and that  the Trump admin “isn’t even pretending to have intelligence at this point” to justify the strikes in Iran.

Ed: There isn’t any legal difference between the two. Jeffries’s distinction here is entirely on judgment and policy, not on the law. He’s wrong about the judgment differences too, not least because Obama seriously miscalculated what would follow when the Qaddafi regime collapsed as a result of the military intervention. But he’s essentially conceding Melugin’s point, and kudos to Melugin for pressing the issue. 

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Glenn Reynolds at the NY Post: Historically, leaders who speak straightforwardly, show self-confidence and lead effectively are, well, good leaders. 

“Leaders” who complain that the world is complicated and they can’t do much about its problems aren’t. 

They gave us “forever wars” instead of victories — not only in conflicts with foreign enemies, but in wars against poverty, homelessness, “climate change” and the like. 

Trump just does things, and they work.





At base, the establishment view of Trump et al. as buffoons and cartoons is a reflection of its own insecurity. 

Ed: I know Pete Hegseth personally. He is far more impressive than Democrats and the mainstream media pretend. Results speak for themselves in Pete’s case … and in Trump’s case as well. 

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Ed: The Internet often needs debunking. In this case, both sides of the Internet should start learning to listen for comprehension. 

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Jerusalem Post: The IDF destroyed a secret Iranian nuclear weapons development site on Tuesday, IDF Chief Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Effie Defrin revealed in a press conference. Separately, the IDF stated that, since the start of the war, the air force had destroyed some 300 Iranian missile launchers.

Naming the site as Min Zadai, on the northeast outskirts of Tehran, Defrin said that the site was linked to weapons development. He said that IDF intelligence followed nuclear scientists who tried to travel there clandestinely.

Ed: The new nuclear-weapons development site is an interesting story, but the launcher tally is more important now. Iran has a stockpile of thousands of ballistic missiles, but the launchers are far more rare and valuable in comparison. If the US and Israel can find and destroy the launchers, the missiles will become useless, especially since it will be progressively more difficult to keep the logistics in place to put the two together. 





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Ed: Hmmmm. Have the people begun an uprising already?

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Ed: IYKYK. Alex Kurtzman obviously excluded, of course. 

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