JUNE 30, 2026

More thoughts on the ongoing negotiations with Iran. Enjoy!

The grand strategy behind the Trump-Vance Iran deal

The president has displayed uncommon vision

BY:          Alexander B. Gray, The Washington Times (June 26, 2026).

The Trump administration’s deal with Iran accomplishes the objectives set by the president at the outset of Operation Epic Fury, and it represents the culmination of his continuous strategic policy focus to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Most important, though, it begins the process of reorienting American grand strategy away from the Middle Eastern conflicts that have characterized the first quarter of the 21st century and toward the great power rivalries that will likely define the next.

Essentially, President Trump was obliged to use decisive military force against Iran to disengage from a region of peripheral concern to long-term U.S. interests.

Since announcing his first campaign for president in 2015, Mr. Trump has been unequivocal that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon.

In 2018, he withdrew from the fatally flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated by President Obama — a deal that paid Iran large sums of cash in exchange for flimsy promises not to acquire nuclear weapons.

Instead, the first Trump administration imposed substantial economic pain on Tehran and maintained that pressure until Mr. Trump’s last day in office.

The Biden administration almost immediately proposed further negotiations with Iran.

Mr. Trump, returning to office in 2025, addressed the threat posed by the mullahs’ unrepentant march toward nuclear weapons. He launched Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025.  Iran’s weapons program was largely destroyed.

Operation Epic Fury achieved the limited goals set by Mr. Trump.Tehran’s leadership was destroyed, its missile program was degraded, and its economy and supply chains were profoundly disrupted by the U.S. Navy’s successful blockade. The Iranian regime is at its weakest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Although Mr. Trump has expressed hope that the Iranian people will ultimately choose a different future, regime change was never a goal of Epic Fury.

Rather, Mr. Trump has clearly understood the core American interest at stake with Iran: preventing a fanatical regime from gaining a nuclear weapon and preventing the disruption of a region that still supplies substantial global energy resources.

In the process, Iran’s myopic decision to militarily target U.S. Gulf Arab allies will solidify those states’ efforts to increase their own defense while demonstrating the fallacy of the entreaties by China that proliferated during the Biden years.

The United States will emerge from the Iran deal having met (and in some cases exceeded) its modest strategic goals for the region.

Epic Fury’s success will ultimately rest on America’s ability to execute Mr. Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy, which prioritizes the defense of the U.S. homeland and the Western Hemisphere, as well as the projection of American power into the Indo-Pacific to deter China’s attempt at hegemony.

Although every administration since Mr. Obama’s has promised some form of “pivot” or “rebalance” to the Indo-Pacific, only the Trump administration has done the difficult statecraft needed to position the U.S. for that strategic shift.

Unlike every previous post-Cold War president, Mr. Trump has been honest about the trade-offs required to meet a challenge as formidable as that posed by the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Trump’s National Security Strategy identifies and prioritizes regions of greatest U.S. interest and directs resources accordingly. His conduct of Epic Fury and the accompanying peace deal reflect the realization of this strategy.

By recognizing that, without bold American leadership, Iran will continue to divert U.S. attention and resources away from our most significant priorities, and acting accordingly, Mr. Trump displayed uncommon vision.

His willingness to wage war for limited ends and to conclude a peace that serves core U.S. national interests will satisfy neither hawks nor doves, but it will place the U.S. in a better strategic position.

The Trump-Vance administration approaches its second half with enviable strategic flexibility.

The proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget would begin to reverse the steady erosion of the military balance between the United States and China that has threatened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.

Continued investments in American energy dominance at home make deprioritizing the Middle East a realistic possibility.

The president’s agenda for American reindustrialization is bearing fruit, reviving the U.S. defense industrial base and encouraging the U.S. private sector to dominate the frontier technologies of the future, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing and fusion energy.

America is on track to emerge from Operation Epic Fury in a far stronger position to win the competition that will define the remainder of the 21st century.

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Iran negotiations expose America’s election-year weakness

Tehran plays for time while Trump faces gas prices, midterms and a restless electorate

BY:          Robert Knight, The Washington Times (June 21, 2026).

Americans have very short attention spans, especially when it comes to their pocketbooks and political leadership. Some of this is built in.

The Constitution requires an election for the entire House every two years, for president every four years and for Senate elections every six years, with staggered terms so the entire upper body is never on the ballot at the same time.

Although this arrangement guarantees that voters do not have to wait long to right the ship of state if they think it is foundering, it gives American foreign policy negotiators a huge disadvantage with their international counterparts, especially totalitarian regimes.

The timeline for President Trump and his administration is quite different from that of the Iranian ayatollahs, who still control their country’s government and, apparently, the Strait of Hormuz, plus remaining stocks of uranium.

Mr. Trump and other Republicans are looking ahead to congressional elections in less than five months. The speed at which gasoline prices fall may well determine who controls Capitol Hill.

The Tehran regime, like the Chinese communists in Beijing, has no expiration date. They can afford to wait out the Americans. Against this backdrop, the administration announced a peace deal with Iran that leaves in place the current regime, allows it to start selling oil again and supposedly opens the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic.

In return, the Iranians have yet again agreed not to work toward acquiring nuclear weapons while implausibly insisting they have never had such a program.

Iran has promised to negotiate for another 60 days, all the while rebuilding its supplies of missiles, drones, anti-aircraft devices and other military equipment. It seems confident that Democrats and mainstream media will undermine support for renewed U.S. military action against it when they inevitably cheat.

While this is going on, the Trump administration has warned Israel to stop bombing Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, who have been sending missiles into northern Israel for years. If Canada, Mexico or Cuba were sending missiles daily into the United States, do you think we would agree to leave them alone?

Every election, we are told, will be the most important in our lifetimes. It is not hyperbole. Think what you will of Republicans, who often inexplicably fumble the ball (as in the Senate’s seeming inability to pass the SAVE America Act to safeguard elections), but the Democrats have morphed into an outright anti-American, socialist party.

Democrats are devoted to open borders, sexual anarchy, confiscatory taxes, wealth redistribution, a growing antisemitic component and a steady supply of lunatics such as James Talarico, their “six genders” Senate candidate in Texas, and Graham Platner, the Nazi-tattooed, reportedly woman-abusing communist in Maine.

Democrats elected Marxist mayors in major cities such as New York and Seattle, and soon in the District of Columbia, along with prosecutors who side with criminals instead of victims.

The party is united by white-hot hatred of Mr. Trump. Unfortunately, the president’s unabashed narcissism fuels it.

By putting his name on the Kennedy Center and proclaiming that the America 250 celebration on the National Mall will be a “Trump rally,” he feeds the “No Kings” nonsense.

Although it may be fun for him, it is hurting Republicans’ chances of retaining Congress because it rubs many independents the wrong way.

Instead of dismissing concern over high gas prices, Mr. Trump must remind Americans that inflation was worse under President Biden and that a single, 10-megaton blast from an Iranian missile in the New York area would kill up to 12 million people.

That was why he bombed Iran in the first place.

The stakes are enormous, which is why the Trump administration has been negotiating with a figurative gun to its head. Hurry up and bring down gas prices. If not, you will turn the country back over to the party of people who, pollsters have revealed, despise America.

On so many levels, the second Trump administration has been a return to sanity and good government. Undoing it would be disastrous.

The alternative to the Iran deal is to go back to bombing Tehran into the Stone Age, which apparently is far more difficult than what we have been told. Maybe they are getting bad intelligence?

In any case, once again, it seems the very soul of America is on the ballot in November. A Democratic takeover of Congress would produce more impeachments, hamstring the administration and set the stage for the 2028 presidential election.

A Senate led by now-Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, would attempt to reverse popular Republican reforms such as stopping illegal immigration, unleashing America’s energy industry, cutting taxes, uncovering massive welfare fraud and securing religious liberty in the face of LGBTQ-inspired totalitarianism. It would also doom the president’s judicial nominees.

The larger problem is that federal elections matter too much. The government was never supposed to be this big, reaching into everyone’s lives in ways unimagined by the Founders and even by the American people just a few generations ago.

Yet here we are. Republicans had better sharpen their message and remind voters about what kind of country they want their children and grandchildren to grow up in.

The Iranians are not the only ones who want to fundamentally deconstruct America.

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The Tenets Of Islam: License To Kill

Because the religion’s clearly stated rules are hostile to Western norms and our Constitution, Western governments fail their citizens

BY:          Shari Goodman, The American Thinker (June 25, 2026).

Since Islam’s arrival upon the world stage 1,400 years ago, when an illiterate Arab by the name of Mohammad, born in Mecca, claimed to be a messenger sent by God (whom he called “Allah”) to spread Allah’s word, approximately 270 million human beings have been slaughtered in Islam’s and Allah’s name, according to the Center for the Study of Political Islam. (Approximately 120 million Africans, 80 million Hindus, 60 million Christians, and 10 million Buddhists.).

Until fairly recently, Westerners were unfamiliar with Islam or its practitioners. However, since Congress enacted America’s Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, our doors have been flung wide open to a Third World, non-Western population whose values and norms are the antithesis of the Judeo-Christian principles that form the basis for our national foundation as outlined in our Constitution.

Unlike any other designated religion, Islam commands its followers not only to spread Islam throughout the globe but, in addition, to create a global Islamic Caliphate where no other religion but Islam reigns supreme. It explicitly commands adherents to “slay the unbelievers until all of dominion is for Allah” (Quran: Sura 9.5).

Muslims, when confronted with the above verse, will beg to differ and reply that the above verse is referenced only when in battle. However, while some genuinely believe that, it’s equally likely that they will proceed to use taqiyya (the right to lie when used to advance Islam).

From the pages of Reliance of the Traveler (p. 746 – 8.2), we learn that, while speaking the truth is appropriate when it achieves its purpose, lying is equally appropriate when the truth is unavailable:

Speaking is a means to achieve objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish through lying because there is no need for it. When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible (N: i.e., when the purpose of lying is to circumvent someone who is preventing one from doing something permissible), and obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory… it is religiously precautionary in all cases to employ words that give a misleading impression…

Furthermore, Muslims fail to inform the public that Islam is dualistic. Islam divides the world into Dar Al Islam (the house of Islam, where all Muslims reside) and Dar Al Harb (the House of War, where all non-Muslims reside).

The laws of Sharia (Islamic law) do not apply to non-believers in the House of War. So yes, while Islam forbids the murder of Muslims, it does not forbid the murder of non-Muslims.

Furthermore, Islam is in a perpetual war with Dar Al Harb until there is no other God but Allah, and all other religions are required to be erased from the face of the earth. (“Fight them so that there is no more rebellion, and religion, all of it, is for Allah only. Allah must have no rivals.” (Ishaq: 324).

Since Mohammad attracted few followers in Mecca, he fled to Medina, where he became a warlord by pillaging nearby villages, raping the women, and enslaving the people he captured, rather than being put to death. While there, he married a six-year-old girl named Aisha and consummated the marriage when she was only nine. In this way, pedophilia and child marriages are practices found and encouraged throughout Islamic countries where Mohammad is considered the “perfect man.”

To entice his followers, Mohammed declared that all captured female slaves are spoils of war to be at their mercy and to be used as their captor sees fit. This means that, within Sharia law, it’s legal, not criminal, to rape non-Muslim women. Sexual exploitation is a right accorded to Muslims in Mohammad’s teachings and the Quran.

This is precisely why a quarter of a million British girls and women have been identified as rape victims by Muslim grooming gangs since the importation of Muslims onto the shores of Great Britain:

 When confronted by British law enforcement, they will often claim ignorance of British laws and reiterate that the rape of non-Muslims is permitted under Sharia law:

To up the ante, Mohammad promised those who die as martyrs (a designation bestowed upon those who die in the name of Islam) will be welcomed to a paradise in which 72 beautiful young virgins will fulfill their every pleasure and desire. To die in the name of Islam is to reach the highest honor, and it is precisely why every act of terrorism is preceded by the battle cry “Allahu Akbar!” (Our God is greater!).

Few Americans have read the Quran or the translation of Sharia Law as outlined in The Reliance of the Traveler, a sanctified English version of Sharia by the leading Sunni university, Al-Azhar, in Cairo, Egypt. However, since the exponential influx of large numbers of Muslims onto our shores after 9/11, the increase in mosques now numbering over 3,000 littering our cityscapes, and the Islamic call to prayer heard five times throughout the day in some American cities, Americans are becoming aware of the danger Islam poses not only to our Constitutional Republic but to our very security and safety.

Clearly, the Quran, unlike any other religious doctrine, affords Muslims the license to kill, maim, rape, and steal from non-Muslims. The question every American must ask is why Islam has not been designated as a foreign political movement that poses a threat to each one of us. Those who are given a license to kill by following a text that permits and encourages them to kill in the name of Islam pose an existential threat from within and a much greater threat than those from without.

Every nation’s duty and priority must be to safeguard the security and safety of its citizens.

Thus, it is imperative for the Trump administration to address this threat by redesignating Islam as a foreign terrorist organization, closing all mosques, and designating the Muslim Brotherhood and its many front groups, such as CAIR, as terrorist organizations to be outlawed within the United States.

Our Republic and our very lives depend on it!

GFK