Americans tend to ignore foreign policy. Living in a continent-sized nation bounded by two vast oceans allows for that dangerous self-deception. But when we’re attacked or the price of gas spikes, we’re rudely reminded that while we may not care about the world, the world cares for us.

Why did President Donald Trump order an attack on Iran? Two reasons: because we had to and because we had the ability to achieve victory.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been a problem for the U.S. since President Jimmy Carter encouraged the fall of the shah in 1979. Carter was worried about human rights. If only he knew the horrors his actions would unleash.

The pattern of Iranian aggression began in 1979, when revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. This act of war humiliated the United States and established Tehran’s playbook: terrorism, defiance and impunity. Four years later, Iran backed nascent militant group Hezbollah’s suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 U.S. service members on a peacekeeping mission in the deadliest single-day loss for the Corps since Iwo Jima. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) trained and armed the attackers, yet the regime faced no serious consequences.

Iran’s support for deadly proxies includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. They act as Tehran’s forward bases, attacking U.S. forces and allies with funding, weapons and direction from Iran. During the extended conflict and occupation of Iraq, Iranian-supplied penetrators — sophisticated improvised explosive devices — killed or wounded hundreds of American troops, with estimates of more than 600 U.S. deaths attributable to Iranian-backed attacks.

Closer to home, Iran conducts illegal operations on U.S. soil, including cyberespionage, assassination plots and attempts to smuggle agents across our borders. FBI warnings about Iranian sleeper cells are based on years of intelligence.

Globally, Iran aids Russia’s war on Ukraine by supplying Shahed drones — cheap, deadly “kamikaze” weapons that mostly kill and maim Ukrainian civilians while draining Western resources.

With China’s help, Iran has been rapidly expanding its ballistic missile arsenal, improving guidance and production with the intent to create an overwhelming offensive capability — before that plan was interrupted by joint U.S. and Israeli action.

And then there’s Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Iran has amassed about a ton of highly enriched uranium — material with no credible civilian use. While June’s Operation Midnight Hammer interrupted Iranian progress toward a larger nuclear stockpile, its existing stocks of 60% enriched uranium were merely weeks away from purification to weapons grade.

Adding to the peril, Iran tested sea-based missile launches two years ago. Using a converted container ship, the IRGC fired a ballistic missile to simulate a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) detonation. This capability allows Iran to position a disguised vessel off America’s coast, launch a nuclear warhead high into the atmosphere to cripple our grid and then sink the ship to obscure its origins. Such an EMP attack could cause millions of deaths from collapsed infrastructure — with no intercontinental ballistic missile required.

Further, Iran’s corrupt theocratic regime believes that its actions against the “Great Satan” (America) and the “Little Satan” (Israel) can bring about the apocalyptic arrival of the hidden 12th Imam — hardly people that traditional nuclear deterrence would be effective against. Further, there’s a very high likelihood that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia and other regional powers would follow soon after.

Why now? While Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs were rapidly advancing, so, too, were U.S. capabilities in a changing world.

The face of warfare has transformed since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. What once demanded hundreds of thousands of ground troops — such as the forces assembled for Desert Storm from 1990 to 1991— can now be accomplished through precision air power. Advances in guided munitions, drones and intelligence enable rapid strikes with accuracy measured in mere feet, dismantling missile sites, command centers and leadership swiftly.

Crucially, the Iranian people themselves can serve as the decisive force on the ground. Widespread discontent, fueled by repression, economic failure, corruption and protests over rights and shortages, has eroded regime loyalty. Unlike more cohesive dictatorships, Iran’s youth, middle class and ethnic minorities — Persians number less than 50% in a nation with seven major ethnic groups — are primed to rise once air power shatters the mullahs’ control. Further, the clandestine infiltration of Starlink terminals allows unprecedented coordination among dissident groups as well the even more remarkable real-time, on-the-ground intelligence from Iranians helping U.S. and Israeli airpower destroy their tormentors.

Now, with superior technology and an Iranian population primed for change, Trump’s decision to eliminate a growing threat might also achieve lasting strategic results for American national security — the collapse of Iran’s ayatollahs will rank with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later.

Had action been deferred, Iran’s rapidly increasing ballistic missile would have soon reached the point of immunity — erecting a shield of threatened destruction behind which the mullah’s nuclear program could be rebuilt.

Iran has a long and proud history. But the past 47 years under theocratic rule have been an aberration that’s held the region — and the world — hostage to violence, chaos and threats.

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Chuck DeVore is chief national initiatives officer for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer, and a former California state assemblyman.

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