Iran is on life support. Like the Titanic, it is time to let it sink.
The United States and Israel have achieved an astonishing victory. The Iranian regime’s leadership, command-and-control structure, defense production facilities, military stockpiles, and ability to project military power have been devastated.
More than 13,500 airstrikes over 38 days have demolished over 85% of Iran’s military industry, crippling the technical workforce that produces the regime’s ships, drones, and missiles.
Factories have been destroyed. Iran’s stockpiles of ballistic missiles have been eliminated or buried. Eighty-two percent of its air-defense missile systems, radar networks, and command architecture have been destroyed or rendered inoperative.
Most of its fuel storage facilities, munitions depots, and airfields are no longer operational. The United States destroyed 161 Iranian naval vessels and 90% of its naval mines.
In addition, the IDF has struck more than 8,500 targets, including at least 1,500 missile-production sites and approximately 700 missiles stored in launch and storage facilities.
Israel has also destroyed Iran’s space research center, which served as a platform for developing advanced technologies for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The iceberg has already been hit
The debate is no longer whether Iran can be stopped. That question has already been answered. The iceberg has already been struck.
For decades, Iran funded terrorist armies across the Middle East, threatened Israel with annihilation, and boasted that America could do nothing to stop it. Today, much of that illusion lies at the bottom of the sea. The regime is discovering that propaganda cannot keep a sinking ship afloat.
And then there is Kharg Island, which the Iranians once called the ‘Orphan Pearl’ of the Persian Gulf. This tiny island, only about one-third the size of Manhattan, is the financial oxygen tank of the Iranian regime.
Nearly one billion barrels of oil pass through its terminals every year, and roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow through this single strategic location.
Whoever controls Kharg Island controls the lifeline of the mullahs. The Revolutionary Guard, the missile programs, the terror networks, and the regime’s machinery of repression are all funded by the oil wealth that moves through it.
This small island is the engine room of the Iranian Titanic. It is the goose that lays the golden egg for Tehran. Cut off Kharg Island, and the regime begins to suffocate.
Flood the engine room, and the ship cannot stay afloat.
No lifeboats for the ayatollahs
Now Iran has nothing left to negotiate with except the threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz.
For years, Tehran negotiated from a position of strength. It used its missile arsenal, its proxy armies, and its nuclear ambitions as leverage against the West.
Today, much of that leverage has disappeared. The regime wants time. It wants sanctions relief. It wants the world to help patch the holes in the hull.
But this is not the moment to rescue the ship.
The Titanic did not sink because it hit the iceberg. It sank because the damage became irreversible. Iran’s military infrastructure, missile production, air defenses, naval capabilities, and strategic deterrence have all suffered catastrophic damage. The regime is taking on water from every direction.
This is not the time to throw Tehran another lifeline. This is the time to make it clear that the era of nuclear blackmail and terror sponsorship is over.
Sink the ship
It is time to sink the Titanic.
Donald Trump needs to make it clear to Iran: Either you do what I am telling you, or Kharg Island will be wiped off the map. The age of nuclear blackmail is over. The Iranian Titanic must finally disappear beneath the waves.
The writer has written 120 books and is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. He is the founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, the Ten Boom Museum in Holland, and Churches United with Israel, the largest Christian Zionist network in America, with more than 30 million followers.