Joseph Vazquez

March 12th, 2026 1:17 PM

Is it any real surprise that the crown prince of the most notorious left-wing empires in American politics is getting all bent out of shape because President Donald Trump decided to finally dismantle the murderous Islamist regime of Iran? 

Alex Soros got his panties in a bunch after the United States launched coordinated strikes on Iran with Israel, and praised the leftist-run Spain for grandstanding against the attacks in a March 2 X post that got ratioed into oblivion. “Why aren’t more Europeans standing up to an illegal war! Same with Canada! They make nice speeches at conferences, but do little. Spain is becoming the leader of the free world,” Soros whined, as if the world would have been better off with a bloodthirsty “Death to America” cult wreaking havoc across the Middle East.

Alex apparently doesn’t see the absolute incoherence of angrily opposing action against the Islamists in Iran while he reshared the Open Society Foundations X post for International Women’s Day that reads, “This International Women’s Day, and every day, we are called to show moral clarity and stand up for the rights of every person on this planet.” Uh, hello!

But a deep dive into his daddy’s history gives a clue as to why Alex has come out full froth against the U.S. and making himself a useful idiot for the floundering Islamic extremists seeking to cling onto power like a barnacle in Tehran.

The Jewish News Syndicate reported on September 3, 2018, that “Iran admitted on Sunday that it had worked closely” with George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, “which has often been accused of promoting an anti-Israeli agenda through left-wing NGOs.”

MRC Business has documented how Soros poured small fortunes into a litany of groups that celebrated terrorist group Hamas’s October 7 genocide against the Jewish people as some sort of a Palestinian liberation effort. Then-Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tried to downplay this connection by saying during a question-and-answer session before the Iranian parliament that Tehran’s work with Soros “predated his term and boast[ed] ‘regulating’ it.” 

Oh, but there’s more! Soros also dumped $50 million into a “network” of Iran-sympathizer groups connected to disgraced former U.S. Special Envoy to Iran under the Biden administration Robert Malley, according to a December 9, 2023, New York Post report. The irony was that Alex had been appointed as chair of the OSF board just a year earlier. Malley, who was one of the core architects behind the infamous Iranian Nuclear Deal under President Barack Obama, had his security clearance suspended amidst an investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified materials concerning “his dealings with his Iranian interlocutors,” according to Commentary Magazine.

The members of the Soros-funded groups tied to Malley, wrote Post reporters Rich Calder and Mary Kay Linge, “gained significant sway within the Biden White House — pushing to defang US sanctions on Tehran while advocating for a renewed nuclear deal.”

The problem is that there’s anecdotes like this showcasing some kind of hidden affinity by the Soros empire for the Iranian regime all over cyberspace if you look under enough proverbial rocks. 

When MRC Business published its January 2023 deep dive investigation into Soros’s connections and influence over global media — George Soros: Propaganda Powerhouse — one of the more alarming examples of connections to the Iranian regime involved his bankrolling and deep ties to powerful lefty opinion clearinghouse Project Syndicate, which boasted having its commentaries published 18,700 times in 2025 alone, being active in 156 countries, working with 573 media outlets, having its columns published in 66 languages, and having at least 140 heads of states as contributors. George Soros, who dumped at least over $1.5 million into Project Syndicate’s coffers between 2016 and 2020, had contributed at least 115 columns to the organization at the time.

One notable Project Syndicate contributor was none other than the anti-American and anti-Israel former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Project Syndicate allowed Rouhani to push propaganda in 2014 threatening conflict with the U.S. if an agreement on his country’s notorious nuclear program wasn’t reached. “By diminishing the prospects for a permanent negotiated agreement on our nuclear program, such behavior increases the likelihood that the Iran-US standoff will continue,” Rouhani wrote.

Rouhani also reportedly denounced Israel in 2021 as “‘the enemy’ of the Middle East in comments leading up to World Al Quds Day, which Iran inaugurated after the 1979 Islamic Revolution to protest the existence of the Jewish state,” according to i24News. Rouhani proclaimed: “‘The Zionists are the enemies of the region and of the security of the Palestinian people.’” 

Need we say more? Well, we may not need to, but George Soros himself does. In a 2014 interview that celebrated the Obama administration’s ongoing work with Rouhani on the feckless nuclear deal, suggested that “a new order would emerge in the Middle East” if the Palestinian, Iran and Syria conflicts were resolved. He took a potshot at Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, sneering that he was “dead set against a deal with Iran” simply “because peace with Palestine would end his political career in Israel.” It couldn’t possibly be because the Iranian regime under now-deceased Ayatollah Khamenei had made the destruction of Israel its inherent obsession, right? For goodness’ sake! Even German publication DW ran this Captain Obvious! March 1 headline following Khamenei’s recent assassination: ” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: The man who wanted to destroy Israel.” This was never hidden knowledge.

But for Soros, Netanyahu’s retrospectively judicious warnings against dealing with Iran were inconsequential because “the broad outlines of a potential new order can already be discerned,” one of which being that “Iran may emerge as America’s closest ally, second only to Israel.” 

Holy crud. No wonder Alex is throwing a fit now. The twisted dreams of Daddy Dearest are getting blown to bits in real time!

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Mar 2, 2026 –Politics

Florida moves to pass its own “SAVE America Act”

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A polling precinct in Hillsborough County on Nov. 8, 2022. Photo: Octavio Jones/Getty Images

A proposal to rewrite Florida’s voter identification requirements aimed at verifying citizenship could make it harder for out-of-state college students and married women to register to vote.

The big picture: The legislation is the state’s answer to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which Republicans are muscling through Congress at President Trump’s insistence.Florida’s version (HB 991 and SB 1334) would, among other things, require new voters and those who update their registration to show proof of citizenship, such as a passport, a REAL ID or a birth certificate.It would also require the State Department to verify the citizenship status of existing voters with the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, affecting those who don’t yet have a REAL ID.What they’re saying: “Just as the SAVE America Act is common-sense, this election integrity bill is common-sense,” state Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka (R-Fort Myers), the bill’s sponsor, said during a state House vote last week.”Floridians want election integrity,” she added. “They want to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote.”The other side: “We shouldn’t be doing anything to weaken the confidence in our democracy… [or] place new barriers between eligible citizens and the ballot box,” state Rep. Rita Harris (D-Orlando) said.Between the lines: The bill is intended to deter noncitizens from voting. But by the state’s own admission, such instances are rare: only 198 noncitizens have been found among the more than 13 million people on its voter rolls.

We didn’t START a war with Iran. After 47 years of relentless attacks, for the FIRST time we FOUGHT BACK.

From David Harriman, on Facebook:

“The American people have lost the concept of war. It is not entirely their fault. Our political leaders have involved us in endless wars all over the world, which they had no desire to win. The United States has by far the most powerful military in history, and yet we lose wars to Afghanistan and Somalia. We have been conditioned to accept such defeats with a shrug. We have forgotten the soldiers who stormed Omaha beach and Okinawa. Today, General Patton would shake his head in disbelief at the strength of our military and the weakness of our people.

After many decades, we finally have a President who is defending our country. He has vowed to destroy the Iranian regime, which has been attacking us and screaming “Death to America!” for 47 years. In less than two weeks, the top Iranian leadership is gone, their navy is nearly gone, their missile defense systems are almost gone, and most of their missiles are gone. They have suffered 1,400 fatalities and we have suffered seven. That is called winning. We haven’t done it since WWII.

General Patton would not have understood our fear of having “boots on the ground.” Air and sea power are great, but finishing a war requires boots on the ground. At the very least, the ground troops must march into the capitol city and control it. There will be little resistance, but there is always some danger. That is the nature of war.

Democrats have complained that the threat of Iran is not clear. Yet the Iranian regime has an unwavering hatred of Western Civilization, a long history of violence toward us and Israel, and a commitment to improve their ballistic missiles and develop nuclear bombs. The Democrats also claim that this will be another endless war (the kind they create), but it appears that Trump will end a 47-year threat in less than three months. Democrats say that the objective of the war is not clear. But President Trump has stated the objective: Unconditional surrender. The word “unconditional” means “without conditions.” The word “surrender” means that they lay down their weapons and wave a white flag. Then we install an allied government.

We need to recapture our strength and confidence, and we need to remember what it means to win.”

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For some people, that ability to carry their physical assets with them gives them maximum peace of mind. And because gold and silver are so portable, you can carry over $100,000 in gold in a jacket or purse and no one will be the wiser.

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Some people may choose to own gold and silver both with a gold IRA and by taking physical possession of the metals at home. Taking physical possession of gold and silver is just one more tool in the toolbox, one more way to diversify your investments. Sometimes that flexibility and diversity of investments can be an important factor.

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With ETFs and other forms of owning precious metals, you are forced to deal with fund managers, exchanges, custodial storage, and even sales of fund assets that can carry pesky fees that add up over time. When you buy physical gold and silver, you are personally responsible for it, meaning you will not pay additional fees related to storage or management.

TEHRAN — Rumors of the Ayatollah regime’s nefarious plot to launch an assault on the west coast of the United States hit a snag on Wednesday, as Iran canceled plans to attack California after seeing Gavin Newsom had already destroyed it.

The Iranian government had issued threats that it was prepared to take revenge on the U.S. by launching attacks against California, but leaders were said to have reconsidered their plan after intelligence reports showed that the state had been completely decimated under Newsom’s leadership.

“You can’t destroy something that’s already destroyed,” said a spokesman for the supreme leader. “We were deep into strategizing a way to inflict mass destruction on California in the nation of the Great Satan, but our secret operatives said there’s nothing left to do that hasn’t already been done there. Rampant crime, crumbling infrastructure, raging wildfires, and, how you say… poop all over the streets. We’re not sure we could do anything that would make it worse.”

Sources revealed that the Iranians had reached out to Governor Newsom’s office to offer congratulations on the job he did wiping out California. “What he has accomplished is impressive,” one insider said. “He’s done more to cripple America and strike fear in the hearts of Americans than we could ever hope to do. Well done, Governor Newsom. We admire you greatly, sir.”

At publishing time, the Iranian government had reportedly asked Newsom if he was interested in becoming the next supreme leader when the position inevitably becomes available.

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Babylon Bee

by Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet, opinion contributors – 03/12/26 7:00 AM ET

Conventional military thought, derived from the writings of Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, dictates that one identify the enemy’s center of gravity, then “concentrate all energy against it.”

For the Islamic Republic of Iran, it center of gravity — “the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act” — is its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose principal mission is to keep the regime in power.

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While the U.S. and Israeli militaries have systematically dismantled Iran’s conventional military and nuclear ambitions — the direct threat to them — they have left the internal security forces — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Basij paramilitary — mostly intact. 

The Basij are the direct threat to the Iranian people and stand in their way of taking back their country, as President Trump urged them to do. They are not likely to “lay down their arms … and accept immunity.”

Last week U.S. Admiral Brad Cooper described Operation Epic Fury as an “unprecedented operation to eliminate Iran’s ability to threaten Americans.” On that score, it is already largely a success.

The Hill’s Headlines – March 12, 2026

“We’re very far ahead of schedule,” Trump said on Monday. He claimed that Iran has “no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force. Their missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including their manufacturing of drones. If you look, they have nothing left. There’s nothing left in a military sense.”

The metrics appear to support these comments. The Iranian navy and air force have been nearly eradicated; ballistic missile and drone mobile launchers, production and storage facilities have been mostly destroyed; Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and produce a nuclear weapon are being neutralized; and their proxies — Hezbollah and Hamas — have been left withering on a vine.

Yet the regime remains in place. Trump’s war has not stopped Iran’s ability to threaten the Iranian citizens whom Trump would prefer to serve as his boots on the ground, rising up and bringing about regime change.

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So, what about the guard corps and the Basij? What happens when the Trump administration achieves its military objectives, but fails at regime-change? The question is especially pressing now that Iran’s Assembly of Experts has chosen Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei — much younger than his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — as the country’s new Supreme Leader.

This is not regime change, nor does it meet the conditions for Trump’s “unconditional surrender.” As the saying goes, they just rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Last Thursday, Trump told Axios that “Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran.”

By most accounts, Mojtaba is more extreme than his father –– a true hardliner. And given the loss in U.S. and Israeli airstrikes of four family members — including his father, mother, wife and one of his two sons — he has a personal axe to grind as well.

But to add an additional layer of complexity to the problem set, he may not even be alive. His whereabouts remain unknown; conflicting reports suggest he was wounded or even killed early in the opening moments of Operation Epic Fury. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is protecting him — or else it is at least protecting the identity of whoever is actually making the decisions now.

Iran’s regime, and their keepers, are deeply entrenched in the fabric of Iranian society after 47 years. Removing the supreme leader is part of the solution, but so too is destroying the institution charged with keeping him in power. 

Tomahawks, Precision Strike Missiles and bunker busters may set the conditions, but at some point, the physical removal of these forces on the ground will be required.

That could lead to “boots on the ground” in the form of clandestine U.S. operators or special forces teams reminiscent of the initial operations in Afghanistan, working directly with resistance in the regular Iranian military or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps itself.

Recognizing that there is a pathway to the center of gravity — and degrading the military is that pathway — the Trump administration must act to support the Iranian people and set conditions for them to act.

https://32fa0771b7dad6ac581de5b19c435ec8.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html

The people need a partner on the ground, and the White House needs someone to step up, take charge and build up a transitional government. But this cannot lead to an Iraq-style occupation. As we have learned, occupation leads to insurgency.

As former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton noted on X, “The regime in Iran is an ideologically driven group of religious fanatics, and it will rebuild if the U.S. declares premature victory.” We need to finish the job this time by attacking Iran’s center of gravity. That means defeating the guard corps and the Basij.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the US European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. They are the co-founders of INTREP360 and the INTREP360 Intelligence Report on Substack.

Add as preferred source on GoogleTags Ali Khamenei John Bolton

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The Democrats are betting on failure.”

That’s how National Review’s Noah Rothman characterizes the Democratic Party’s response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks on the terrorist regime that controls Iran.

But Rothman has it only half right. Democrats aren’t just betting on failure in Iran. They are trying to engineer it. And not just in Iran, but at home as well, where they are actively trying to undermine the economy.

Because, you see, the midterms are coming up, and to Democrats, what matters isn’t the well-being of Americans or ridding the world of its chief terrorist threat. The only thing that matters is winning elections.

While Ayatollah Khamenei’s body was still warm, Democrats were pushing a War Powers Resolution that would have blocked President Donald Trump’s ability to carry out any further attacks against Iran without first getting congressional approval.

It wasn’t intended to succeed, only to sow division in the country.

Now Democrats are looking to deny the administration funds to continue to prosecute the war.

“We have the power of the purse,” said Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum, who is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

Not to be outdone, Gavin Newsom, the California governor drooling over the prospect of being the next president, is now calling on the U.S. to end its support of Israel.

“It breaks my heart because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path, where I don’t think you have a choice but that consideration,” said Newsom.

By immediately attacking the war, calling it a “war of choice,” suggesting, as Newsom did, that we are being manipulated into war by Israel, that will be costly to Americans, that Trump should focus on “affordability,” and so on.

The constant refrain of attacks hasn’t stopped Trump, but has managed to dampen public support, which now sits at 43% and quite possibly is helping to steel the Iranian government’s resolve.

The only Democrat to buck his party has been Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who recently pointed out that “Every member in the U.S. Senate agrees we cannot allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. I’m baffled why so many are unwilling to support the only action to achieve that.”

So, the Democrats’ strategy is to hope for failure, bet that the region erupts in chaos, even if it means more American lives are lost, all to drive down Trump’s popularity.

None of that is true. Inflation has been well below the Biden years for Trump’s entire second term. Real wages are up. Until the shutdown took a bite out of the GDP, the previous two quarters came in “unexpectedly” strong.

When not sowing discord about the war, Democrats are actively trying to talk down the economy and doing whatever they can to make their dire predictions come true.

As Reuters noted, the 43-day government shutdown that Democrats engineered last fall shaved 1.15 percentage points of the nation’s GDP in the fourth quarter.

When the February jobs numbers came out last Friday, showing an unexpected drop of 92,000, Democrats seized on it to predict economic calamity.

“The warning signs about this economy have been flashing for months,” said Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass, who is the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee. He said Trump has “left families with an economy limping as costs soared and growth weakened.”

Don’t expect media “fact-checkers” to point any of this out. But the constant bleating about economic turmoil can affect consumer confidence, which in turn can bring about the results Democrats are predicting.

Rooting for failure so they can seize power. That’s what today’s Democrats are all about.

Issues and Insights Editorial Board

Advisory UKMTO #2026

11 March 2026 Total Incident Summary. Reporting period: 28 February 2026 – 11 March 2026. UKMTO has received 17 reports of incidents affecting vessels operating in and around the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz (SOH) and Gulf of Oman. Total attack reports: 13. Total suspicious activity reports: 4. Details of these incident reports are available below.

Attack UKMTO #20

11 March 2026 UKMTO WARNING 020-26 – ATTACK Report Date: 11 Mar 2026 Report Time: 0205UTC Issue Date: 11 Mar 2026 Source: Master UKMTO has received a report of an incident 50NM northwest of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Master of a Bulk Carrier has reported their vessel being hit by an unknown projectile. There is no report of any environmental impact. The crew are reported safe and well. Authorities are investigating. Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to UKMTO.

Attack UKMTO #19

11 March 2026 UKMTO WARNING 019-26 – ATTACK Report Date:11 Mar 2026 Report Time:0435UTC Issue Date: 11 Mar 2026 Source: Company Security Officer UKMTO has received a report of an incident 11NM north of Oman in the Straits of Hormuz. It has been reported that a cargo vessel has been hit by an unknown projectile in the Straits of Hormuz which has resulted in a fire onboard. The vessel has requested assistance and the crew are evacuating the vessel. Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to UKMTO while authorities continue to investigate.

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Abraham Lincoln is thought of by many as not only the greatest American statesman but as a great conservative. He was neither. Understanding this is a necessary condition for any genuinely American conservatism. When Lincoln took office, the American polity was regarded as a compact between sovereign states which had created a central government as their agent, hedging it in by a doctrine of enumerated powers. Since the compact between the states was voluntary, secession was considered an option by public leaders in every section of the Union during Hie antebellum period. Given this tradition—deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence—a great statesman in 1860 would have negotiated a settlement with the disaffected states, even if it meant the withdrawal of some from the Union. But Lincoln refused even to accept Confederate commissioners, much less negotiate with them. Most of the Union could have been kept together. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to remain in the Union even after the Confederacy was formed; they reversed themselves only when Lincoln decided on a war of coercion. A great statesman does not seduce his people into a needless war; he keeps them out of it.

When the Soviet Union dissolved by peaceful secession, it was only 70 years old—the same age as the United States when it dissolved in 1860. Did Gorbachev fail as a statesman because he negotiated a peaceful dissolution of the U.S.S.R.? Likewise, if all states west of the Mississippi were to secede tomorrow, would we praise, as a great statesman, a president who refused to negotiate and launched total war against the civilian population merely to preserve the Union? The number of Southerners who died as a result of Lincoln’s invasion was greater than the total of all Americans killed by Hitler and Tojo. By the end of the war, nearly one half of the white male population of military age was either dead or mutilated. No country in World War II suffered casualties of that magnitude.

Not only would Lincoln not receive Confederate commissioners, he refused, for three crucial months, to call Congress. Alone, he illegally raised money, illegally raised troops, and started the war. To crush Northern opposition, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of the war and rounded up some 20,000 political prisoners. (Mussolini arrested some 12,000 but convicted only 1,624.) When the chief justice of the Supreme Court declared the suspension blatantly unconstitutional and ordered the prisoners released, Lincoln ordered his arrest. This American Caesar shut down over 300 newspapers, arrested editors, and smashed presses. He broke up state legislatures; arrested Democratic candidates who urged an armistice; and used the military to elect Republicans (including himself, in 1864, by a margin of around 38,000 popular votes). He illegally created a “state” in West Virginia and imported a large army of foreign mercenaries. B.H. Liddell Hart traces the origin of modern total war to Lincoln’s decision to direct war against the civilian population. Sherman acknowledged that, by the rides of war taught at West Point, he was guilty of war crimes punishable by death. But who was to enforce those rules?

These actions are justified by nationalist historians as the energetic and extraordinary efforts of a great helmsman rising to the painful duty of preserving an indivisible Union. But Lincoln had inherited no such Union from the Framers. Rather, like Bismarck, he created one with a policy of blood and iron. What we call the “Civil War” was in fact America’s French Revolution, and Lincoln was the first Jacobin president. He claimed legitimacy for his actions with a “conservative” rhetoric, rooted in an historically false theory of the Constitution which held that the states had never been sovereign. The Union created the states, he said, not the states the Union. In time, this corrupt and corrupting doctrine would suck nearly every reserved power of the states into the central government. Lincoln seared into the American mind an ideological style of politics which, through a sort of alchemy, transmuted a federative “union” of states into a French revolutionary “nation” launched on an unending global mission of achieving equality. Lincoln’s corrupt constitutionalism and his ideological style of politics have, over time, led to the hollowing out of traditional American society and the obscene concentration of power in the central government that the Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent.

A genuinely American conservatism, then, must adopt the project of preserving and restoring the decentralized federative polity of the Framers rooted in state and local sovereignty. The central government has no constitutional authority to do most of what it does today. The first question posed by an authentic American conservative polities is not whether a policy is good or bad, but what agency (the states or the central government—if either) has the authority to enact it. This is the principle of subsidiarity: that as much as possible should be done by the smallest political unit.

The Democratic and Republican parties are Lincolnian parties. Neither honestly questions the limits of federal authority to do this or that. In 1861, the central government broke free from what Jefferson called “the chains of the Constitution,” and we have, consequently, inherited a fractured historical memory. There are now two Americanisms: pre-Lincolnian and post-Lincolnian. The latter is Jacobinism by other means. Only the former can lay claim to being the primordial American conservatism.

Donald Livingston, Chronicals

The Air Force’s preparations for war were fascinating. Because the number of aircraft and pilots is fixed and known, and because it was clear a race would develop between Iran’s launch capability and the Air Force’s ability to destroy launchers and missiles, the solution devised by the Air Force was to increase the number of waves. How? Fly to Iran and back three times a day. Every pilot. And how is that done? With stimulant pills. That was the trick they planned. And it worked.

When every pilot does this three times a day instead of once or twice, the number of strikes soars, literally and figuratively, the number of strikes surges, and the ability to reduce Iran’s launch capability is dramatically strengthened. “We understood that we had to bring as many bombs as possible to the target in as little time as possible,” an IDF official said this week, “to jam them up, destroy them, and bring them down as quickly as possible, without giving them time to lift their heads.”

The Iranians are no fools. We were not the only ones preparing for the event. They were too. The previous operation taught them a few things, and they stationed large numbers of bulldozers and tractors at launch sites so they could quickly reopen bombed tunnels after each wave. They were counting on attacks frequency, but the high pace left them no chance.

A learning competition developed here between our side and the Iranians. A competition that was decided, but not without effort. And we have not yet spoken about the American aircraft that joined in. Bottom line: by Wednesday afternoon, the Air Force had dropped its 5,000th munition on targets in Iran in four days. Throughout all 12 days of the previous operation, 3,700 munitions were dropped.

The heart of the race was during the first 48 intense hours. With medical supervision, the Air Firce found the most suitable stimulant pills and trained with them to ensure there were no side effects, no damage to the pilot’s sharpness or motor skills, while also identifying the optimal nutrition for such a situation. They also learned from the Americans’ experience, since the Americans are used to long-duration flights of this kind. B-2 bombers, for example, can fly continuously for very long hours.

What happened was that the pilots and ground crews were pushed beyond anything they had ever experienced during the first three days. The only ones who pushed harder were the Iranians. They took the full blow, and the sharp decline in the pace of launches recorded in recent days is the result of that effort. As of Thursday, the assessment was that the Air Force was on the verge of breaking Iran’s launch capability. No, not reducing it to zero, but bringing it down to “manageable” dimensions that would leave the interception systems with a reasonable workload.

In wartime, the Air Force’s motto is: “Either you’re flying, or you’re sleeping, or you’re eating.” In the current war, that was shortened to: “Either you’re flying, or you’re eating.” They simply did not sleep. Throughout all this, everyone had to be kept on a tight leash, to make sure there was no hubris, no excess self-confidence, no creeping contempt. The historic downing of an Iranian aircraft by an F-35 improved morale, but did not reduce the intensity. Here and there Iranian MiGs also took off against our pilots, but quickly broke contact.

And despite the clear results, the Air Force is not getting confused. It is not underestimating the Iranians. They are fighting, someone said, they are putting up a fight, they came to wage war, they learned, they prepared, they are not giving up on anything, they still take off here and there, they continue launching even though they know that after every launch they will be hit. They are more determined in this round than they were in the previous campaign.

What kept the pilots and ground crews going at this murderous pace? Simple: in addition to the uncompromising professionalism of the force, there was also the knowledge that every sortie, every takeoff, every flight of hours out and hours back, was intended to ensure that the family of that pilot, that female pilot, that extraordinary ground crew member, would have to run to shelters fewer times.

The force multiplier

The Air Force is not only pilots. The ground crews are another unresolved wonder. During every visit by American or foreign officers to Air Force bases, the visitors try to understand how it can be that the servicing, preparation, and arming time of an Israeli fighter jet between strike waves is significantly shorter than in the United States, Britain, or anywhere else, and with less manpower, or women-power. Try explaining that to them. They won’t understand.

Speaking of women, it is an advantage. Everyone I speak to about the issue praises the extra ingenuity and intelligence of the young Israeli women who race with endless energy between the hardened shelters, bombs, and missiles, making sure as few minutes as possible pass between one takeoff and the next. Books will still be written about the cooperation with the American gorilla. It was an unprecedented event in which the naval, air, and intelligence arms of the two countries were integrated as equals and became a single arm.

Israelis suddenly understood American power. The fact that more than 100 modern refueling aircraft flooded the skies of the Middle East meant that every Israeli pilot could change course or stop for refueling almost anywhere. The dialogues between the refueling pilot and the pilot being refueled will one day be published and warm many hearts. Then there is the intensity with which the United States can strike anywhere, at any time, at any hour, with any munition, from any possible bomber. The unchallenged air superiority of the F-22s, and of course the B-2 bombers, the strategic game-changers.

But the Americans, too, got a chance to witness some extraordinary things: the professionalism, precision, and capabilities that exist only in the Israeli Air Force; intelligence so precise it is jaw-dropping, down to a hair’s breadth; and endless creativity that we will only 

Ben Caspit, Jerusalem Post