“A big win for President Trump IF the Strait opens and stays open.”

As part of The Panel on Special Report, that was my instant reaction when Bret Baier asked all five of us to assess the just announced two week cease-fire in the battle with Iran. While Dasha Burns, Mark Penn and Juan Williams demurred one way or the other, Kellyanne Conway agreed with me and elaborated, citing President Trump’s long established pattern of negotiation having brought about at least a temporary win.

The test of how big a win it actually is will be revealed in the rest of the two weeks. The crucial issue is, can whomever in Iran wrote the check promising the Strait of Hormuz would open actually be able to cash it?

If so, the world’s oil supply will surge a bit and the remnants of the Iranian regime will have a chance to inventory the destruction that has rained down on their forces for five weeks.

TRUMP’S IRAN STRATEGY IS WORKING AND TEACHING OUR FOES WHAT DETERRENCE MEANS

If the Strait doesn’t reopen to unmolested traffic, or the attacks on Israel and our Gulf allies don’t cease, another round of the third Gulf war will soon commence.

The first round began with the disaster of the invasion of Israel from Gaza and the massacre and kidnapping which followed on October 7, 2023. With a combination of help and hurdles, the U.S. under the (maybe) direction of President Biden stood with our embattled ally, and Israel struck back hard against Hamas to the south, Hezbollah to the north and from the Houthis across the Arabian peninsula. The Jewish State absorbed the first direct attack from Iran with our help. The reality of the menace from Iran and its proxies was revealed to the world.

When President Trump returned to the Oval Office, the Israelis got their hostages back because of pressure brought to bear by the president and his team. A cease-fire took hold and the remnants of Hamas and the forces Hezbollah retreated to their tunnels and hideouts, all of their senior leadership dead.

IRAN REVEALS 10-POINT PLAN FOR PEACE WITH THE US – HERE’S WHAT’S IN IT

The next round began in June of 2025, with Israel’s Operation Rising Lion and ended with America’s Operation Midnight Hammer. The Iranian nuclear program was obliterated and its air defenses shattered. The people of Iran then rose in December to demand change and were massacred in January. The world saw clearly the lunacy of the Khamenei 1.0 regime. The U.S. and Israel planned their next attack.

They struck with devastating results on February 28 with Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion. At the enormous cost of 13 precious American lives and a score of seriously wounded U.S. soldiers and dozens of casualties in Israel and the Gulf States, the allies shattered every aspect of the terrorist regime in Tehran.

We don’t know who is running what in Iran, but we have more forces en route and anywhere from a day to two weeks to assess the massive intelligence haul of the past 96 hours, which includes the near miraculous rescue of the downed American airmen and the fractured, frantic and ineffective response of the disabled IRGC to the chance to capture one of our invaluable warriors.

The rescues humiliated the Iranian regime — again — and ongoing damage to their military industrial base continued unabated. Within the hours of the incredibly complex rescue missions also came the B-2s again, to drop Massive Ordinance Penetrators on two locations in Tehran in the midst of the rescue operation as IRGC senior leadership unwisely gathered.

The public doesn’t known who is left alive on the IRGC side, but reports of a critically wounded Khamenei 2.0 and still more erasures from the IRGC command structure leaves the regime tottering. There is still no internet for the people of Iran. The remnant is afraid of us, Israel and their own people.

President Trump issued his ultimatum. His never-evolving critics denounced his language though it got through to whomever is running the bunkers in Iran. (It’s absurd to read the post by President Trump as threatening the Iranian people when the “civilization” he was referring to was manifestly the one oppressing the “Great People of Iran,” the one which the president stated in the post had ruled for 47 years through “extortion, corruption and death.”)

Incredibly, some in the Manhattan-Beltway national security left tried to turn this post into the threat of the use of nuclear weapons or slightly less insane lesser degrees of disproportionate attack on civilians, which it never was. Insta-experts declaimed how attacks on bridges and power plants were war crimes. Online hysteria among those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome reached new heights.

Then someone within the regime blinked and the president took the big win. Instantly his online critics went from “He’s a war criminal” to “TACO Tuesday.” Their collective 180 doesn’t make sense. They don’t make sense. They have lost the thread. A mortal enemy of the West for nearly a half century has been pummeled, its leadership destroyed, its proxies battered. Five weeks of battle have shown the world that Iran cannot defend itself and possesses only missiles and drones that fire mostly ineffectively at anyone they can reach.

Time will quickly tell us if the new set of rulers atop the smoking ruins of the IRGC command chart can follow through on the promise that secured the cease fire. If not, President Trump can initiate another round of pummeling with more and updated intelligence on what is going on within the regime.

MIKE PENCE: TRUMP AND OUR INCREDIBLE MILITARY ARE ENDING 47 YEARS OF IRANIAN TERROR

It is far from over, but long conflicts never resolve in a month. The most relevant history to consult comes from the closing decade of Cold War I.

During the summer of 1983, President Ronald Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterrand planned deployment to Europe of the Pershing II missile as well as nuclear-capable cruise missiles.

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Enormous domestic and international pressure tried to make them stop, but they didn’t. Instead they established deterrent and telegraphed Western will to the Soviets. Along with Reagan’s SDI, support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and his walk-out at Reykjavík, the West turned the momentum of the Cold War, through the last acts of which President George H.W.  Bush adroitly managed the West, and that decades old drama ended in dissolution of USSR in December, 1991.

HEGSETH DECLARES ‘DECISIVE MILITARY VICTORY’ OVER IRAN

Note that’s an eight-year unbroken stretch of American presidents’ commitment to winning crucial battles along the way which preceded the strategic victory.

To accomplish such huge shifts on the world stage, the West’s enemies must believe the U.S. and its allies are (1) strong and (2) can use that strength despite domestic political opposition and legacy media-hatred on both sides of the Atlantic. Snap judgments of every twist and turn have to be made, but the first five weeks of this phase of the 47-year war with the regime was been an enormous success, and probably made inevitable the transformation or collapse of the Iranian regime. It also revealed a terrible sclerosis among the European allies that stood with us in the first Cold War. The good news is that it also revealed the immense capabilities of our most important ally, Israel, as well as the recognition of reality from our Gulf State allies. Fundamental things are afoot in the Middle East, most of them very good indeed.

The U.S.-Israel-Iran battles of 2025 and 2026 are already pivot points in world history and we aren’t close to the end of this drama. But the U.S. has re-established deterrence via President Trump’s moves here and across the world. He and Prime Minister Netanyahu not only just ordered and oversaw the crushing of the Iranian nuclear program and military-industrial base in ways we can barely know, they also ordered the destruction of four or more levels of radical and corrupt regime leadership and brought much closer the prospect of real freedom for the Iranian people.

We won’t know for years how to fully assess the past five weeks, but with the ‘83-‘91 example of strategic will and patience in mind, Tuesday night was a very good night for the West — if the Iranian regime reopens the Strait and ceases fire soon. If the Iranian regime cannot control its missile and drone forces because the leadership is dead or impotent, the war will resume. But freedom for the long suffering Iranian people and stability in the Middle East has never been closer since 1979.

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 p..m ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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