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The Brew: We Bombed Iran. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

By John Zmirak Published on June 23, 2025

Like any decent person, I’m relieved that jihad-obsessed Iran is further away from having nuclear weapons today than they were on Friday. As a patriot, I’m proud of our country’s technical and military excellence. Being a well-instructed Christian, I wish Israel’s people well. I trust President Donald Trump’s good judgment far more than I did George W. Bush’s in 2003.

But I worry, and I am praying, and I hope that you are too.

It’s easy to rattle off the benefits of Saturday night’s attack on Iranian nuclear sites, as it was easy to explain why the U.S. didn’t want North Vietnam to conquer the south and why the Soviet Union wished to shore up a friendly regime in Afghanistan against Islamic fanatics in 1979. The motives for Lyndon Johnson and Leonid Brezhnev to take the first fateful steps of wading into those quagmires seemed perfectly rational. Both nations seemed plenty strong enough to quash the petty, poorly armed radicals who opposed them. But things didn’t work out well in either case, did they?

It turned out that both imperial powers were wobbling on feet of clay — the U.S. deeply divided over racial and social issues in the 1960s, the Soviets riven by ethnic conflict and mired in economic decline. And however “limited” and “incremental” the American and Soviet interventions seemed to begin with, they escalated inevitably. The harder each superpower punched the tar baby, the deeper it got stuck in.

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And that’s what I fear right here, right now, in the coming troublesome months. The U.S. is far more disorderly and divided than it was in the 1960s. We might be as brittle and fragile as the Soviets proved to be in the late 1980s, when the Afghan war pushed that regime over the brink and into chaos. Watch this grimly fascinating documentary on the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and its gradual descent into full-scale intervention for a glimpse of our possible future. Or just rewatch Apocalypse Now.

If a civil war breaks out in Iran, how much pressure will be put on President Trump to directly intervene, to bring “freedom” and “democracy” to that long-suffering people? It will sound noble and uplifting, like the “Christian thing” to do. But then, it was a Baptist Sunday school teacher, Jimmy Carter, trying to do the “Christian thing” in Iran that brought down the Shah in 1979 and brought the rabid mullahs to power in the first place. Millions died in ensuing wars, but Carter’s conscience was always clear.

Israel was perfectly capable of eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, and justified in doing so. It didn’t need U.S. help, and we didn’t need to invite the blowback that will come our way. What price will we pay in domestic terrorism? It’s impossible to say. Remember how fragile our freedoms proved during the COVID panic. What would happen if we got hit with a wave of terror attacks — to be handled by an FBI still worm-eaten with Obama loyalists whose specialty is prosecuting grandmas who took selfies on January 6, 2021?

Wise, well-meaning people are worried.

We don’t even know how many untraceable illegal immigrants the Biden regime waved in. State governors and mayors are openly defying Trump’s efforts to remove a small percentage of those aliens while federal judges steal the president’s lawful authority one lawless order at a time. How many of those “refugees” and “asylees” are working for Iran or its ally, China? How many would it take to blow up the Hoover Dam, take down the electrical grid for a major city, or sabotage a nuclear reactor? How many American servicemen would perish in the fool’s errand of trying to create the world’s first functioning Islamic democracy when we can’t even impose federal authority in Los Angeles?

CBS News reports that Trump’s team is concerned:

As President Trump is contemplating potential U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, law enforcement officials have stepped up surveillance of Iran-backed operatives in the United States, multiple sources told CBS News.

FBI Director Kash Patel has increased efforts to monitor possible domestic sleeper cells linked to Hezbollah — a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization backed by Iran — since Israel’s Operation Rising Lion offensive began earlier this month, U.S. officials said.

Both the White House and FBI declined to comment.

Let’s pray for peace in the world, but especially here at home.

Who Helped Iran Become So Dangerous? Obama and Biden Did

Joe Hoft reminds us how we got to the point that Israel felt it necessary to preemptively attack Iran and Trump felt the need to wade in:

Barack Obama sent Iran pallets of cash – $1.7 billion total according to President Trump. This cash transfer was reported by The Gateway Pundit at the time and again in early 2018 when President Trump called out Obama for his crimes.

On January 17, 2016, a cargo plane with $400 million in foreign currencies was secretly sent to Iran in the dead of night.

This was the same day the Iranian regime released four American hostages held in Tehran.

Barack Obama later told reporters this was not a ransom payment.

Obama lied.

Former US Iranian Hostage Saeed Abidini told FOX Business Network today the Iranian regime WOULD NOT let his plane leave Tehran until the ransom plane arrived.

US officials held the ransom cash until the hostages were released.

Two days after Obama sent Iran the ransom cash the US government wired 13 individual payments for $99,999,999.99, each with an independent MICR, totaling $1,299,999,999.87.

Already the cash from Obama’s ransom payment to Iran has been traced to terrorist groups in the region.

Elections have consequences. How will the risky military situation the U.S. is now in affect the midterms in 2026? It’s impossible to predict. But if the Democrats win, we’re back to nonstop fake impeachments and legislative gridlock.

Presidential Power Upheld … for the Moment

Even as we flex our muscles halfway across the world, judges determined to nullify the results of the 2024 election continue to grab at the president’s constitutional authority. The latest was a judge declaring that President Trump did not have the power to federalize the California National Guard, which Gov. Gavin Newsom won’t use to restore order in major cities roiled by anti-ICE riots that endanger federal agents’ lives. CBS News reports:

Washington — A federal appeals court on Thursday extended its block of a judge’s order that directed President Trump to return control of California’s National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The unanimous order from a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is a victory for the president and allows for the continued deployment of roughly 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, where they have been protecting federal property and U.S. immigration agents during enforcement operations.

Mr. Trump invoked a law known as Title 10 to call the Guard into federal service earlier this month in response to demonstrations against immigration raids conducted across Los Angeles. Since then, a total of roughly 4,100 National Guard troops and 700 active-duty U.S. Marines have deployed to Los Angeles.

Newsom, a Democrat, objects to the use of troops in California’s largest city and sued the president over his decision to federalize the California Guard. A federal judge, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, concluded last week that Mr. Trump’s actions were illegal and exceeded the scope of his authority….

The 9th Circuit judges sided with Mr. Trump on Thursday. They wrote “it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority” to federalize the National Guard under Title 10, which allows the president to call the Guard into federal service whenever “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion,” or when the president is unable to “execute the laws” of the U.S.

The regime change we really need is right here at home: an end to the power of the Deep State and globalist elites who wish to replace the native population of the U.S. with docile foreigners, smuggled in and used as illegal voters in our elections.

Along The Stream

Later this morning, read Jules Gomes’s hard-hitting report on the approval of abortion up through birth in nominally Christian Great Britain.

How is Colorado undermining parental rights and religious freedom in support of transgender delusions? Peter Demos tells the alarming truth in this informative video.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.