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The West has a bad habit of mistaking fanaticism for grievance and terror for "complexity." It is a perverse mindset that can lead to deadly outcomes.
Nowhere has that delusion been more dangerous than with Iran. For nearly half a century, polite opinion has insisted that the regime in Tehran can somehow be moderated, accommodated, or reasoned into good behavior. Nonsense. Iran’s rulers are not misunderstood pragmatists. They are revolutionary theocrats who have built their state on repression at home and terror abroad.
The nuclear threat alone should end the argument. In its February 2026 report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had nearly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium that is but a small step from nuclear weapons-grade purity. That should have set off alarms in every capital of the free world. This is not fuel for peaceful commerce. Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapons state producing and stockpiling uranium at this level. That is not normal behavior. It is a giant warning siren.
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Then there is delivery power. The Center for Strategic and International Studies points out that Iran possesses the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Mideast, including thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles. It has also poured resources into manufacturing drones by the thousands, both for direct use and for proxy warfare. Put plainly: a regime nearing nuclear-weapons capability is simultaneously building the means to intimidate neighbors, overwhelm defenses, and menace U.S. interests and allies across an already fragile region. This is not just an Israeli problem. It is a Middle East problem, a Europe problem and an American problem.
Nor does Tehran merely threaten from within its own borders. It exports mayhem. The U.S. State Department still identifies Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism. That support is not abstract. It runs through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen — proxies armed, financed, trained and directed to spread chaos, attack civilians, threaten Israel, intimidate Arab governments and disrupt international commerce. Tehran’s rulers do not seek regional stability. They seek leverage through fear.
Americans, above all, should not need this explained. The Islamic Republic announced itself to the world in 1979 with the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. More than 50 Americans were taken hostage and held for 444 days. That outrage was not an aberration; it was a mission statement. The regime’s hostility to the United States has never been incidental. It is foundational. The White House pointed out last month that, for nearly half a century, Iran has killed and maimed thousands of American citizens and service members through its own forces and proxy militias.
And what kind of regime is this internally? One that murders its own people on a staggering scale. Protests this year prompted government security forces to kill tens of thousands of its citizens. The exact number may still be contested. The moral fact is not. This regime also routinely tortured detainees, staged forced confessions and used execution as an instrument of state terror. A government that behaves this way toward its own people would not become more civilized once it got a nuclear umbrella.
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Then there is the economic blackmail. The Strait of Hormuz remainsStrait of Hormuz remains one of the most important energy chokepoints on the planet. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption passes through it, and about one-fifth of global LNG trade moves through the same corridor.
Any regime with the ability — and the willingness — to harass shipping there has a hand on the world’s economic throat. Iran knows this. It has long treated the strait not as an international passageway but as a geopolitical hostage.
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Yet much of the Western media still approaches this regime with a strange softness, as though the real danger lies not in Tehran’s nuclear sprint, missile buildup, drone swarms, terror proxies, or domestic slaughter, but in the possibility that the regime might actually be stopped or removed altogether. That inversion of morality has done enormous damage. It is why outlets willing to say plainly what Iran is — Fox News among them — matter. The public must hear the unvarnished truth: stopping Tehran’s theocratic terror machine would be good for Israel, good for Arab states, good for Europe, good for America and good for the long- suffering people of Iran.
President Trump’s nationwide address last week was a start, but what the stakes are must be hammered home again and again.
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The blood-soaked fanatics running Iran and their strange sympathizers know all too well Iran is getting crushed militarily. It is counting on political and media pressure to get the U.S. and Israel to stop operations before their mission is completed.
The choice is no longer between confrontation and calm. That choice disappeared years ago. The real choice now is between stopping Iran before it crosses the final thresholds of menace — or paying a vastly greater price later. Peace is not preserved by indulging a death cult. Peace is preserved by defeating one before it acquires the means to blackmail the world.
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Steve Forbes is chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media.
