Israel Crippled Iran – and Can Finish the Mullahs

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The War Was Clear, the Spin Was Dirtier

Israel fought that war alone. For twelve days, it carried the weight, striking Iranian command centers, taking out senior officers, and smashing nuclear sites with precision. Tehran refused to face Israel’s military head-on, instead targeting Israeli civilians, rockets aimed at neighborhoods, over 300 missiles in just 48 hours with dozens directed at Tel Aviv, drones striking cities, and terror cells primed to spill blood far from the front lines. That is the regime’s nature: it doesn’t fight soldiers, it hunts families.

In the middle of its losses, Tehran even put a $2 million bounty on Donald Trump and a $400,000 bounty on Benjamin Netanyahu, a pathetic attempt to project power while its own military machine was burning. This wasn’t a war of equals. It was Iran’s leadership lashing out like cornered animals while Israel demonstrated skill, intelligence, and resolve.

And then came Washington. The United States dropped a handful of B-2 payloads on nuclear sites already struck by Israel, a gesture more for headlines than for victory, and immediately turned to diplomacy. The same administration that had let Israel do the heavy lifting swooped in to get the mullahs a ceasefire. Israel had Iran bleeding, exposed, and on the ropes, and instead of letting the fight end where it belonged, in Tehran’s defeat, Washington pulled the plug.

But the worst spin came after. Instead of acknowledging that Israel had carried the war and exposed the regime’s weakness, commentators painted it as a reckless escalation. Media voices blamed Israel for “provoking” the attacks, analysts credited U.S. air power for “balance,” and the regime’s apologists cried victimhood over the very losses it brought on itself.

That is the false narrative. Israel broke the mullahs’ myth of invincibility. The rest of the world scrambled not to report it, but to bury it.

Araghchi Spits Out the Truth

The spin couldn’t survive. For more than two months, Tehran bragged about “victory,” parading propaganda of resilience while mourning commanders in silence. In Washington, Trump took credit for playing kingmaker, boasting that his limited strikes and rushed ceasefire “kept the peace.” Denials, twists, and egos piled into one big narrative: Iran won, Israel is the warmonger, and Trump is the master dealmaker.

And then Abbas Araghchi shattered it.

Standing at a podium, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister admitted what no one wanted to hear: Iran cannot negotiate like before.

He didn’t phrase it that bluntly, of course. He tried to cloak it in diplomatic fog: “new frameworks,” “changed conditions,” “new dimensions.” But the meaning is unmistakable. Israel’s twelve-day, precisely planned operation and the collapse of its position that followed didn’t just bruise the regime. It rewrote the battlefield. Iran lost ground it cannot recover, and now even its top diplomat is forced to acknowledge it in public.

For a regime built on endless chants of ‘Death to Israel,’ being forced into this admission is humiliation, not strategy. This is desperation. The same regime that once boasted of funding Palestine, arming Hezbollah, and fueling jihadist movements across the region, the same regime that waved nuclear enrichment as its untouchable shield, is now crawling into Vienna, begging for a new set of rules.

Araghchi wasn’t trying to hand Israel a victory lap. But he did. His confession is the most unmistakable evidence yet that the war wasn’t a draw, wasn’t “managed escalation,” and wasn’t balance. It was a rupture, a cut so deep that Tehran’s mask of strength slipped off in front of the entire world. And the tragedy is this: the so-called international community still refuses to admit it, because admitting it would mean acknowledging Israel already won.

Snapback or Safety Net? Europe’s Double Mask

Araghchi’s words should have been the end of the spin. The regime admitted weakness. The cracks were visible. But instead of seizing the moment to end this cancer, Europe staged its own performance.

France, Germany, and the UK announced they had pulled the snapback trigger, starting the thirty-day process to restore UN sanctions. On the surface, it looks like decisive action. In reality, it is theater designed for headlines, not results.

Because these are the same governments that keep Tehran alive, they posture about “holding the regime accountable,” while maintaining back channels, facilitating shadow trade, and protecting the very banking loopholes that feed the mullahs’ survival. They talk about punishing Iran, yet in the same breath, they signal “flexibility” if Tehran comes back to the table. That isn’t punishment. It’s a coupon with fine print.

And Europe knows exactly who it is dealing with; this isn’t speculation. Their own courts have already done the convicting.

• 1997 – Berlin, Germany: The Mykonos restaurant trial convicted Iranian operatives for assassinating Kurdish dissidents, and the court formally found Iran’s leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, responsible for ordering the hits.
• 2018 – Paris, France: Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi was arrested in Germany and later convicted in Belgium for plotting to bomb an opposition rally in Villepinte, outside Paris.
• 2015 – The Netherlands: Dutch intelligence confirmed that Iran ordered and carried out assassinations of dissidents Ahmad Mola Nissi and Ali Motamed on Dutch soil.
• 2018 – Denmark: Copenhagen uncovered an Iranian intelligence plot to assassinate an opposition figure; Denmark recalled its ambassador and exposed Tehran’s hit team.
• 2020 – Belgium: Courts convicted Iranian agents of delivering explosives to European gangs in exchange for carrying out attacks.
• 2022 – Sweden: Hamid Noury, a regime official, was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the 1988 mass executions in Iran after being arrested on European soil.

From Paris to Copenhagen to Amsterdam, the entire continent has tasted the regime’s terror, yet the lifelines never stop.

Each conviction should have closed the door on Tehran. Instead, Europe kept it wide open.

Taken together, these cases prove what Europe already knows: Tehran exports terror, uses gangs as proxies, launders its violence through Europe’s streets, and gets caught red-handed.

And yet… well, here we are. The same governments that prosecute Iran’s agents as criminals still enable its rulers as partners.

Europe’s game hasn’t changed in forty-five years: strong language for the cameras, lifelines for the clerics. They wag their finger while handing over the rope.

And Iranians are the ones who pay. Decades of European appeasement are why the regime always rebuilds, why it survives wars that should have ended it, and why millions of Iranians remain prisoners in their own land.

• Carter let the revolution fester and, in the end, freed the hostages by unfreezing nearly $8 billion of the Shah’s assets and handing them to the mullahs.
• Reagan didn’t end the regime’s terror campaign; he got caught in the Iran-Contra scandal, trading arms for hostages while Tehran expanded Hezbollah.
• George H.W. Bush offered “goodwill begets goodwill,” sending secret messages to Tehran while it continued assassinations of dissidents abroad.
• Clinton chased reformist illusions, lifting sanctions on “civilian trade” and legitimizing Khatami’s regime while Iran built its terror empire in Lebanon.
• George W. Bush put Iran in the “Axis of Evil” speech, but then bogged the U.S. down in Iraq, where Iran’s IRGC and militias killed over 600 American soldiers with EFPs. No consequences for Tehran.
• Obama delivered the jackpot: $1.7 billion in cash, sanctions relief, and billions more in oil revenue under the JCPOA, all while Iran continued missile tests and terror finance.
• Biden unfroze another $6 billion for “humanitarian use,” looked the other way on oil sanctions, and restarted back-channel talks, even as Iran armed Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
• Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal and sanctioned Tehran, but when Israel had Iran bleeding in 2024, he stopped short and forced a ceasefire that preserved the regime.

Both parties have kept the regime alive, and both have American blood on their hands for it. Iran’s fingerprints on American graves stretch from Beirut to Baghdad to Washington itself.

And the evidence has piled up for decades:

• 1983 – Beirut, Lebanon: Iran’s proxy Hezbollah bombed the U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241 American servicemen and wounding 128 more. U.S. intelligence tied it directly to Tehran, yet Washington still treated the regime as a partner to negotiate with.
• 1996 – Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia: 19 U.S. Air Force personnel killed in a bombing planned by Iranian agents. The FBI indicted Iranian officials, but the regime was never held accountable.
• 2007 – Iraq: Congressional testimony confirmed what the U.S. Treasury and Pentagon had already found: Tehran supplied EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) that killed more than 600 American soldiers and maimed hundreds more. No direct response ever followed.
• 2011 – Washington, D.C.: The Justice Department indicted two Iranian agents for plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador at a Georgetown restaurant, planning mass civilian casualties on U.S. soil.
• 2018 – Rewards for Justice: The State Department posted multi-million-dollar bounties on IRGC operatives tied to global terror networks, including Abdul Reza Shahlai for killing Americans in Iraq, yet policy toward Tehran stayed the same.
• 2022–2023 – U.S. soil: Federal charges against IRGC agents plotting to kidnap dissidents, hack infrastructure, and assassinate former U.S. officials like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. Iran literally has open bounties on American leaders and still Washington talks about “dialogue.”

And now? Washington talks tough, points at sanctions, demands inspections, while always making sure Tehran never collapses. Both parties are guilty. Both have treated regime survival as “regional stability,” even when it meant sacrificing Iranians, Israelis, and peace itself.

That’s not foreign policy. That’s betrayal.

The Only Proven Factor: Israel

Strip away the noise, and one fact remains: Israel just proved it can cripple and, if unhindered, finish the Islamic Republic.

The twelve-day war wasn’t a fantasy. It was the first true demonstration that the regime’s nuclear empire, its military command, and its myth of invincibility could all be shattered by targeted Israeli strikes. Tehran bled. Its leaders panicked. Its foreign minister confessed weakness.

Does that mean the regime is finished? No. The clerics still hold the guns over their people, still control the oil, still use terror networks abroad. But Israel showed the world something every Western diplomat has denied for forty-five years: the mullahs can be broken.

Iran’s strength isn’t what is stopping it; it’s Western protection. If the U.S. and Europe stopped shielding Tehran, stopped throwing it lifelines, and stepped aside, Israel could finish the job.

The choice isn’t whether Israel can; it has already proven that. The choice is whether the West will let it.

And what would that mean? It would mean that millions of Iranians would be freed from a system that has enslaved them for generations. Israelis would be safer in their own land. And for the first time in decades, the Middle East would be closer to peace.

That isn’t fantasy. It’s the only path to freedom, security, and peace.