Reading · Caldwell's Corner

(AUTHOR’s NOTE: On the floor of the United States Senate this past Thursday, 7.23.26, Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT) gave a floor speech against the Democrats latest attempt to use the War Powers Act to give the terrorists in Iran a reprieve from current U.S. military action against them.

He did so without notes and with the authority that only a Navy Seal and the first midshipman to join the U.S. Army Special Operations exchange program and graduate from U.S. Army Ranger School could command. He is a husband and father of four, businessman, rancher and was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor and Purple Heart before leaving the military at the rank of lieutenant after being wounded.

The speech is 5 minutes and 42 seconds and will be the best 5 minutes and 42 seconds you could spend today, tomorrow, this week, month or all year. If you do nothing else today, please watch. If you don’t read even the first word of this week’s column, that’s fine by me. His words are far more important and carry far more perspective than any I could ever begin to write.

Video link and full transcript is here: https://www.sheehy.senate.gov/news/press-releases/watch-sheehy-speaks-against-iran-war-powers-resolution-on-senate-floor/

For the sake of everything good that is still left in this great nation, please do not ignore my plea.)

Now, on to the column:

For over fifteen years now, this column has pointed out example after example of legacy media bias to the left and the damage it wreaks upon Americans’ trust in it.

The latest example being the overwhelming negative coverage of our current combat operations against Iran.

While “Trump’s war of choice” and “Trump’s illegal war” pique emotions and yield the desired result of depressing public support for confronting Iran, they do future generations a disservice by putting short term political gain ahead of long-term stability and peace in the region.

Since the attacks started on February 28th, tens of thousands of words have been written and thousands of hours of talking heads and politicians pontificating against the action have consumed the airwaves.

Lost within that fog of negativity? Any discussion of the plausible possibility that we are, at this very moment, witnessing the end of the evil that is the Iranian regime.

That after almost half a decade of Iran spreading terror and death around the globe, a new dawn could be just below the horizon.

Yes, I certainly understand the skepticism coming my way about now.

And no, this is not some rah-rah, all in on the President’s handling of operations to date. Serious and deadly mistakes have been made.

From letting Vice-President J.D. Vance talk him into the weeks long pause that allowed a battered and confused enemy to re-group and re-supply, to the ridiculously naïve Memorandum of Understanding, the President came perilously close to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Then, for reasons only known to them, someone in the Iranian leadership decided it would be a good idea to resume attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Finally awakened from Vance’s false siren song of peace, Trump’s eyes now appear to be open to the truth that when it comes to the current Iranian regime, there is no end save victory.

I write these words fully aware that they are not popular words.

I understand that at this moment keyboards are pounding out “how dare I support such an erratic idiot whose recklessness has already gotten 18 of our best killed?”.

No one, including myself, wants war. No one, except the terrorists, is celebrating the pain of those 18 families.

The easy path would be another pause and return to negotiations.

Yet that’s the same path that every administration has followed since 1979. A path that not only got us nowhere and but also got thousands killed.

More importantly is the fact that what’s not making the headlines, what’s not getting reported, is what was happening in Iran prior to February 28th.

And it has nothing to do with the current political parlor game of debating whether Iran was or was not just days away from a nuclear breakout.

It has everything to do with a simple four-letter word that has punched above its weight since the ancients first discovered it: math. Yes, simple math.

After the initial giveaways of the Obama administration and then an added four years of appeasement by the Biden administration, tens of billions of dollars to flowed into the coffers of the Iranian regime. Billions that financed not just their proxy terror groups, but their ability to mass produce cheap ballistic missiles and drones without consequence.

Considering the complexity and production lag times of missile production in the American supply chain it was only a matter of time before Iran would reach a point of no return.

That point where it had amassed an arsenal of conventional missiles and drones so large, so massive, that it would guarantee the regime’s ability to overwhelm any attack from outside forces, including the United States.

It was WWII and the European theatre in reverse.

Germany had superior tanks, fighter planes and infantry arms yet it couldn’t produce them at a rate fast enough and in numbers large enough to counter the sheer number of the same pouring out of American factories.

The technicality and sophistication of German military production was its Achilles heel that it just could not overcome.

That is the simple math that compressed the time to act from “let the next administration handle it” to “either act now or accept that Iran will be able to renew pursuing a nuclear weapon with no way to stop them”.

But don’t just take my word for it. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) has been warning of what has been coming since 2023. He even co-sponsored legislation with then Senator Robert Mendendez (D-NJ) to extend and expand sanctions that would have restricted Iran’s ramp up, but it never made it out of the Senate.

Yes, you read that correctly. There was bi-partisan legislation to address what we face today but Congress failed once again.

Trump certainly has his faults, but when it comes to Iran, there’s plenty of blame to go around.

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