Douglas Murray: President Trump can end the nuclear threat from Iran with one phone call

Would you mind if someone tried to kill you?

For both Donald Trump and for the state of Israel the answer is “Yes.” 

Last August, under President Joe Biden, federal prosecutors in New York charged Afghan-born Farhad Shakeri in a plot to assassinate Trump.

Shakeri is currently believed to be in Iran.

Shakeri was tasked with killing Trump in the US before or after last year’s election. 

President Trump will have to live with such threats from the Iranian regime for the rest of his life.

After all, none other than the Supreme Leader of Iran — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — has used his social-media accounts to promise to assassinate Trump. 

A lurid video recently put out by the ayatollah even showed Trump being assassinated by Iran on a golf course. 

Israel has to live with the same threat.

Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, successive Iranian leaders — both so-called “moderate” and extreme — have all said that they wish to annihilate the state of Israel and destroy the United States of America. 

Israel is closer to Iran than this country is.

And so it has to take this threat more seriously than the United States does.

But every reasonable voice agrees that Iran cannot ever acquire nuclear weapons. 

First because they have promised that they will use them.

But secondly because if Iran ever did get the bomb, then every other country in the Middle East would rush to go nuclear next.

If that happened, then the world’s most dangerous region would become full of the world’s deadliest weaponry.

But how to stop it? 

Brink of nukes 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently confirmed that the Iranians were on the brink of acquiring enough enriched uranium to produce around 10 nuclear weapons.

The Israelis have acted on their own intelligence and last week began bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

In doing so they did what no other country would do.

They also did what almost every other country wanted.

For decades every Western democracy has said that Iran cannot get the bomb.

For years almost every non-democratic ally of the US in the Middle East has also said that Iran must not get the bomb.

But for years successive administrations in this country and abroad have failed to do anything much. 

The Israelis have done plenty to slow things down.

They are believed to have released tools like the Stuxnet virus (in 2010), which did enormous damage to Iran’s nuclear program.

Along with dissidents inside Iran, they are also believed to be behind the killing of a number of people involved in Iran’s nuclear race. 

So, yes, the Israelis managed to set the Iranian project back.

But they could not stop it.

Until now. 

Now they have been pushed to the final stage.

While everyone else has continued to talk.

And then talk about talks, Israel knew the world was running out of time.

So last week they began bombing Iran’s nuclear sites. 

End the tyranny 

Praise for their actions has come from surprising places.

On Tuesday the chancellor of Germany — Friedrich Merz — spoke the truth.

He said that through its bombing campaign, Israel was doing the “dirty work for all of us.”

He continued, “We are all affected by this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.” 

For once a German chancellor is right.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has colonized Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and many other countries in their region.

They have brought terrorism as far abroad as Buenos Aires and London and killed hundreds of American troops — in Lebanon and Iraq. 

Now all eyes are on President Trump. 

The president has a very difficult decision.

A number of the most crucial nuclear sites in Iran, like the facility at Fordow, can only be destroyed by a bunker-buster bomb that only the US has.

Successive US administrations have refused to sell this weapon to the Israelis. 

Now, almost a week into the war, Israel has been unable to stop Iran’s nuclear program entirely.

If the Israelis destroy only 70%, or 80% or even 90% of the Iranian nuclear project, then there is still the possibility that Iran can restart its nuclear race.

Meaning that the world will always have this gun to its head. 

For many years, President Trump has made it plain that he will never allow this.

But the mullahs may be happy to wait until some other Sleepy Joe-like figure is in the White House. 

Trump knows he cannot let that happen.

But this is the one chance in our lifetimes to once and for all stop the world’s worst regime getting their hands on the world’s worst weapon. 

As a poll published in yesterday’s Post showed, President Trump’s MAGA base is keen for him to follow through on his promise.

A whopping 65% of MAGA Republicans support US strikes to finish off Iran’s nuclear project.

Just 19% oppose it.

Which shows that the president’s noisy online critics are just as kooky and irrelevant as he senses them to be. 

Who’s in control? 

“But what will happen next,” some of his critics say.

There is an easy answer to that. 

President Trump’s campaign promise is that he will never allow Iran to have nukes.

In the coming hours and days he has the opportunity to make good on that promise. 

But what about “regime change?”

In truth those words do not need to be anywhere near his lips or his agenda.

If the Iranian people want to rise up and overthrow the death-cult regime that has held their country in terror for 46 years, then they should.

Many of us will wish them well.

But that is their affair. 

The president’s only need is to make good on his promise to the American electorate.

If he does that, then he will send a sharp but necessary message to a regime that has too long threatened his own life, the life of Israel and indeed the world.