This didn’t begin Friday.
Carter started it.
He watched the Islamic Republic take power, watched American diplomats get seized and paraded on television for 444 days, spent the rest of his presidency negotiating with people who had already told us exactly what they were.
Reagan facilitated it.
October 23rd, 1983. A Hezbollah truck bomb funded and directed by Iran killed 241 United States Marines in Beirut while they slept. The deadliest single day for the Marine Corps since Iwo Jima. Reagan’s response? Tehran was heard clearly and never forgotten kill enough Americans at once and America will leave.
That lesson became the operational blueprint for every Iran-backed proxy attack for the next forty years.
Clinton ignored it.
1995 — a car bomb in Riyadh kills five Americans.
1996 — Khobar Towers. A massive truck bomb kills 19 United States Air Force personnel in Saudi Arabia. Nothing.
1998 — Embassy bombings in Africa.
2000 — USS Cole. Seventeen sailors killed. Clinton launched missiles at an empty training camp and an aspirin factory. Eight years. Hundreds of Americans dead or wounded. Zero consequences for Tehran.
Bush handed them the keys.
He called them the Axis of Evil correctly. Then invaded two countries simultaneously and handed Iran the greatest strategic gift in its history. Iranian Quds Force operatives flooded across the border funding, training, and arming the militias killing our soldiers.
And the response was to continue the war while avoiding direct confrontation with the country killing our people.
By the time Bush left office Iran had deeper influence in Iraq than we did.
Obama funded it.
This is where failure becomes unforgivable. The Green Revolution of 2009 where millions of Iranians in the streets begging for American support ignored.
The protesters were crushed. The regime survived. Then came the $150 billion in sanctions relief, sunset clauses that expired within a decade, zero restrictions on ballistic missiles, and zero restrictions on funding proxy terror networks.
Then came the cash. $1.7 billion. On pallets. On an unmarked plane. In the middle of the night. Delivered simultaneously with American hostages.
The regime used the imagery as propaganda for years and used the money to fund Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthi expansion in Yemen, and the proxy militia networks in Iraq and Syria that spent the next decade killing Americans.
Obama literally funded the apparatus that put the drone into Tower 22.
Biden surrendered to it.
160-plus attacks on American forces from October 2023 forward. American soldiers killed in Jordan. Two Navy SEALs lost at sea intercepting Iranian weapons shipments to the Houthis.
Houthi missiles disrupting global shipping lanes.
Iranian proxies running operations across five countries.
Three Georgia soldiers died in their beds.
Then came Trump.
He looked at forty-five years of this record and did something no president had done since the hostages came home.
He said no.
Maximum pressure. IRGC designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Sanctions reimposed. The JCPOA abandoned. Soleimani the architect of Iranian proxy violence across the entire Middle East, personally responsible for hundreds of American deaths killed in a precision strike in January 2020.
The regime paralyzed.
The proxies recalibrated. The nuclear program set back. For the first time in four decades the regime faced a president it genuinely could not predict.
Then Trump left office. Biden came in. The pressure evaporated. The appeasement resumed. And the regime, patient as it has always been, went back to work.
And now we’re here.
So the next time someone tells you this is Trump’s war tell them they are brainless twats.
This isn’t Trump’s war.
This is forty-five years of American presidents refusing to finish it and one president finally deciding that the bill comes due.
If you are not capable of comprehending that move to Iran and defend the regime personally.
The Trump Kennedy Center remembers Bob Weir, who, along with his bandmates of the Grateful Dead, was inducted into our 47th class of honorees just last year.
Mr. Weir died last night at the age of 78, leaving behind a wife, two daughters, and an iconic music career spanning over 60 years.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Weir.
“What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Bobby Weir, just 17 years old when he co-founded the Warlocks, was one of the very few people who was at every single Grateful Dead show. Joining up with Jerry and Pigpen in 1964, and soon after Billy and Phil, with Mickey soon to follow, the Grateful Dead were defined by each of the unique musicians and voices these guys brought to the stage. And Bobby was as unique as they come.
A guitar player unlike any other, and a songwriter who created some of the most interesting, exciting, and oddly-timed songs in rock history, Bobby was also the unabashed rock star in the Grateful Dead. His list of contributions to the Grateful Dead repertoire is way too long to list, but songs like Sugar Magnolia, Truckin', Jack Straw, Cassidy, Looks Like Rain, Playing In The Band, Weather Report Suite, The Music Never Stopped, Estimated Prophet, Feel Like A Stranger, Hell In A Bucket, and Throwing Stones are just the tip of iceberg of his songwriting magnificence.
When Bobby had a spare moment both during the Dead's 30 year performing career and after, he was always working on exciting, different projects like Kingfish, Bobby & The Midnites, Weir & Wasserman, RatDog, The Other Ones, The Dead, Furthur, Dead & Company, Wolf Bros, symphonic collaborations, recordings, performing. He never sat still, and was always moving forward, an inspiration to us all.
Watching Bobby do anything was always a joy, as he embraced life around him. First and foremost, his family gave him immense happiness. Being on stage and performing for us all showed us a man who loved to bring smiles to our faces. He didn't do anything halfway, always giving it his all.
For 60 years, Bobby has been a huge part of the soundtrack to our lives. His kindness, generosity, and musical contributions have made our world a better place. — David Lemieux
Photo by Adrian Boot @ Retro Photo Archive