Posted on 06/20/2025 1:00:48 PM PDT by Mr. Mojo
The comparisons are flying fast and loose. As Israel continues to dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons program with surgical precision, and as President Trump weighs the next phase of American involvement, critics and skeptics are reaching for two familiar cautionary tales: Libya and Iraq.
But Iran is not Libya. And it is not Iraq either. The current campaign has a defined, lawful objective. It is not a regime change. It is not nation-building. It is not an open-ended war. The mission is the complete and irreversible destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. That mission is already well underway and showing results.
In 2011, NATO intervened in Libya under the banner of humanitarian protection. Within months, the mission morphed into full-scale regime change. Gaddafi was killed. His government collapsed. And the coalition walked away.
Libya descended into chaos, with rival factions, terrorist safe havens, and foreign powers turning the country into a proxy battlefield. The state ceased to function. There was no plan for the day after.
Iran is not Libya. It is not a broken shell of a state held together by one strongman. It has a functioning economy, strong institutions, a middle class, and a deep bench of scientists, engineers, and a robustly well-educated society.
Iran is not going to unravel because key nuclear facilities are destroyed. It will not spiral into anarchy from airstrikes. It is far more resilient, far more dangerous, and far more embedded in regional and global power dynamics. The Iraq comparison is just as flawed. Iraq was a full-scale invasion. It was based on faulty intelligence and executed with no coherent postwar plan. It involved hundreds of thousands of American troops, a toppling of the entire government structure, and years of bloody counterinsurgency and sectarian violence. That war left deep scars on US foreign policy and strategic credibility.
What is happening now with Iran looks nothing like Iraq. There are no American boots on the ground. There is no occupation. There is no attempt to transform Iran into a Western-style democracy. This is a limited military campaign targeting a specific threat: the infrastructure, personnel, and technology behind Iran’s illegal nuclear weapons effort.
Israel has already delivered devastating blows to Iran’s nuclear program. Enrichment facilities at Natanz and Isfahan have been struck. The heavy water plutonium reactor at Arak has been rendered unusable. Multiple weaponization labs have been destroyed. According to reports, 14 of the 15 nuclear scientists on Israel’s high-value target list have been eliminated. That is not symbolic. That is a strategic victory. The only parallel would be eliminating Oppenheimer and every member of the Manhattan Project before they ever arrived at the Los Alamos Laboratory.
President Trump is not rushing in because there is no need to. Israel is achieving the mission step by step. Trump is using the time to mitigate risks, prepare for contingencies, and hold the cards. American assets are moving into the region not to invade, but to finish the job if needed, or to deter escalation.
The choice now lies with the regime in Tehran. As Trump might say, we have the cards, Israel has the cards, and Iran can take the diplomatic offramps offered by the United States and Europe, or it can continue on a path that ends with its program being destroyed.
This is not the beginning of a new war. This is the long-overdue end of a decades-long campaign by Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, destabilize the region, and threaten the world. It is a campaign being carried out with intelligence, airpower, cyber capabilities, and precision. There is no appetite for occupation. There is no plan for regime change. There is only a clear, achievable military objective rooted in international law and shared security interests.
If the Iranian regime collapses under the weight of military defeat, economic pressure, and domestic unrest, that will be the result of its own failures. But that is not the goal. The goal is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state. Nothing more, and nothing less.
This is not Libya. This is not Iraq. This is strategic clarity in action. And it is working.
Yeah, Libya and Iraq didn’t spark WWIII!
Good point. The new Iran government will be pro US and the West. My bet this will happen soon. Putin loses another comrade.
Will the people be smart enough to get rid of the mullahs on their own? They tried under Biden & Obama. Timing was off.
Russia, China, and Iran are all members of BRICS.
BRICS "Rio de Janerio Great Reset" is set for 7/6-7/2025.
News reports indicate that China buys 90% of Iran's oil production.
Iran has been supplying Russia with drones in its war with Ukraine.
I have not seen anything in the news indicating the Iranian people are rising up against the mullahs. Of course reliable information on what's happening inside Russia, China and Iran is very hard to come by.
Why is Iranian oil off limits? Hit their ports…..no tankers…..infrastructure.
Did Israel sacrifice their soldiers in Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan)?
Did Israel sacrifice their soldiers in the Persian Gulf War?
Did Israel sacrifice their soldiers in the Second Gulf War?
When has a power vacuum in the Muslim world every been filled by pro-US and Western government in the past 25 years?
It's a fantasy that has failed over and over again.
Fundamentalist regimes almost always fill power vacuums in Muslim nations.
Because it will increase oil prices and screw over Americans.
And, how does any sane person expect the Iranian not to hate us if we do that and don't spend money rebuilding the country?
It's an incredibly bad idea.
Rand Paul labeling this as a “forever war” indicates something is not right with him.
“Why dismantling Iranian threat won’t create another Libya or Iraq”
because Persians are not Arabs ...
Rand Paul might be right—we may have to occupy Iran for decades.
“Trust me bro, THIS time it will work…”
Ideally regime change will be organically driven by Iranians themselves and the creative efforts of various intelligence agencies. Expect the theocrats and military to steadily come down harder and harder on the people to the point where they organize and rise up. It will be brutal and ugly, but necessary.
/heavy sarcasm off/
Didn't the Bushes ask Israel not to participate so as to not offend the Muslim sensibilities of the Muslim nations that helped us?
Yeah, let’s follow the Clinton/Albright doctrine who allowed North Korea to build their bombs. Ho0w did that work out?
This guy is way too confident. No one has any idea what will happen if the current regime is deposed. It could be a pro-Western government. Or it could be years of civil war and chaos leading to another ISIS on steroids. That’s not a reason to keep the regime in place. But no one should be glib about what will happen.
“ Yeah, let’s follow the Clinton/Albright doctrine who allowed North Korea to build their bombs. Ho0w did that work out?”
No harm to the US so far. Avoided another war.
Pretty good, IMO.
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