The mullahs’ regime — or whatever is left of it after we vaporized their Supreme Leader on Saturday — just sent two drones into the US Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The building caught fire. Six American service members have now been killed in Operation Epic Fury. And the Democrats’ big takeaway from all of this? Trump didn’t fill out the right paperwork first.
These people are unbelievable.
Senator Chris Murphy is out there screeching that the whole operation is “illegal” because Trump didn’t come to Congress hat in hand before launching strikes on a regime that was weeks away from building a nuclear weapon. You know what else is illegal, Chris? Hitting an American embassy with a drone. Maybe start there.
Here’s what actually happened. On Saturday, the US and Israel launched a coordinated strike on Iran called Operation Epic Fury. (The Israelis called their version Operation Roaring Lion) The first wave took out Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a bunch of his senior goons in a daylight strike on his compound in Tehran. US and Israeli intelligence had been tracking the old man’s movements and knew he’d be meeting with his deputies that morning.
Iran’s response was to start firing missiles and drones at basically everyone in the Middle East. Not just at us — at Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, and Oman. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed they targeted 27 US military locations in the region. Most of those got swatted down by air defenses. Most.
The ones that didn’t get swatted down killed six of our troops.
A single Iranian drone punched through air defenses and scored a direct hit on a makeshift operations center at Shuaiba port in Kuwait on Sunday morning. It hit the center of a triple-wide trailer where our guys were working. Six Americans dead, eighteen more seriously wounded. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the strike hit a “fortified tactical operation center” but one projectile made it through.
(But sure, Chris Murphy, tell us more about your paperwork concerns. We’re all ears.)
Then the Iranians had the actual audacity to send drones at our embassy in Riyadh. Our embassy. Two of them got through Saudi air defenses and set the compound on fire early Tuesday. The Saudis say they swatted down eight others near Riyadh and Al Kharj. Luckily, the embassy had already been evacuated — so no American casualties at the compound itself. But the symbolism isn’t lost on anyone. You attack a US embassy, you get what’s coming. Ask the last few guys who tried.
President Trump told NewsNation, “You will find out soon what the US response will be for attacking the Riyadh Embassy and killing six US servicemembers.” He later told CNN that “the big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”
We believe him.
Hegseth laid out the to-do list for Operation Epic Fury: blow up Iran’s missiles, blow up their missile factories, sink their navy, demolish their “security infrastructure,” and make sure they never get a nuke. He described the approach as “surgically, overwhelmingly, and unapologetically.” He also insisted this is “not a so-called regime-change war” — then added, with a straight face, “the regime sure did change, and the world is better off for it.”
Ha. Regime change through vibes. We’ll take it.
Trump posted on Truth Social: “If the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!” Imagine being the last surviving mullah, hiding in a basement somewhere in Tehran, and reading that on your phone. Sleep tight, fellas.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Democrats are running the Iraq War playbook from their 2006 highlight reel. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are pushing a bipartisan War Powers resolution. And Hakeem “Grocery Store” Jeffries is somehow connecting the Iran strikes to the price of eggs, because that’s what passes for strategic thinking in the House minority these days.
Here’s what none of them are saying: Khamenei was weeks to months away from having a nuclear weapon. These are the lovely people who’ve been arming every terrorist group with a grievance and a rocket launcher for forty years — Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, you name it. Now they’re firing missiles at civilian airports across the Gulf. We were supposed to just sit around and wait until they had nukes to go with all that? Pop quiz: how did that work out with North Korea?
The State Department is telling Americans in more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries to “depart now” — which is State Department-speak for “run.” Americans in 14 countries including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, and Israel are advised to take the first flight out. Trump says the operation could last four to five weeks. Hegseth says it won’t be “endless.”
We’ve heard that one before — but this time, we’re prone to believe them. Sec. Hegseth promised there will be no nation building like what they tried to do in Iraq. That’s good, because as we all know that was a disaster. This is a very different operation than that one because Iran has a national identity and centuries of history as a nation. Iranian have a lot of national pride. None of that existed when with Iraq. Iraq was a nation that was being held together with paper sticks and when we stormed in their house of cards blew over with a whisper. Iraqis had no national pride or sense of identity. There was essentially nothing to put back together after we ousted their dictator and his regime. They had to figure it out–and by and large they are still struggling with that. This time around there is no plan to turn Tehran into a democracy at gunpoint. Just blow up their missiles, their navy, their equipment and their nuclear program and leave. That’s a mission even the Pentagon can’t screw up. (Probably.)
Six American families just got the worst knock on the door imaginable. Those families don’t need Hakeem Jeffries connecting their loss to the price of a dozen eggs. They don’t need Chris Murphy waving around a copy of the War Powers Act like it’s a hall pass. They need what Trump just promised them: the big wave.
It’s coming. And the mullahs — or whatever’s left of them — are about to find out what happens when you kill American soldiers and then fire drones at our embassy for an encore. Spoiler: it’s not a sternly worded letter to the UN.
