A major battle with Iran appears imminent.
Ought it to be called a war, a battle, or a strike?
That depends on what the United States and Israel decide to do and what President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu call it.
It also depends on whether Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, orders the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s proxy forces in Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, as well as terror cells around the world, to mount counter-attacks that kill Americans, Israelis or people in our Gulf allies.
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Whatever the president and the prime minister order, the ayatollah can trigger massive escalation with any counter-attack that results in American or Israeli casualties.
In June 2025, Israelis called their attacks on Iran and Iran’s missile fusillades against the Jewish State “the 12-day war.” Americans called their B-2s’ obliteration of Iran’s nuclear weapons program an “operation”: “Operation Midnight Hammer.”
Operations and strikes occur in both battles and wars. What the United States has assembled in and around Iran is a concentration of military forces so immense that everything is on the list of possibilities awaiting President Trump’s order: a discrete one-day operation, numerous strikes over days or weeks, or an intense days, weeks, or months-long “battle” to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and missile factories as well as facilities crucial to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and perhaps political leadership, or a war against the Islamic Republic along the lines of the wars conducted against Serbia in 1999 and against Libya
The NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia/Serbia (Operation Allied Force) lasted for 78 days, starting on March 24, 1999, and ending on June 10, 1999. The campaign was launched to stop actions against the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo and concluded with the withdrawal of Yugoslav/Serbian forces from the region. Over 1,000 Serbian military personnel were killed and at least 500 civilians.
NATO’s air campaign against Libya and its dictator, Muammar Gaddafi lasted for approximately seven months, from March 23 to October 31, 2011 and included 7,000 bombing sorties from the air. A study of that air campaign concluded about 8,000 combatants on both sides died and that Human Rights Watch concluded 72 civilians died in the bombings. Gaddafi himself was captured and killed on October 20, 2011.
A second Libyan civil war began on May 16, 2014, when Khalifa Haftar launched Operation Dignity, later escalating with the formation of rival governments in Tripoli and Tobruk. The conflict concluded with a ceasefire signed on October 23, 2020. That ceasefire is precarious and fighting between factions erupts periodically.
President Trump has laid down four red lines for Iran and Iran has violated all four: The regime is reported to have resumed efforts to enrich uranium and reach towards a nuclear weapon, to continue to build more and larger ballistic missiles, to fund its proxy forces across the Middle East and, of course, to continue to murder its citizens.
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Ayatollah Khamenei and his senior military commanders continuously taunt and belittle President Trump and the American military as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel. The classic “wounded beast” lashing out is playing out before our eyes, and all the honeyed talk from Iran’s diplomats crumbles under the weight of the regime’s leadership’s poisoned rhetoric.
There is, of course, genuine risk to our troops and to our allies in Israel and the Gulf States. That is why when President Trump orders the American military to attack, it should be with overwhelming and sustained force. The president has given Iran opportunity after opportunity to stand down and stop its crazed behavior. Iran is incapable of doing that. Iran’s generals have not organized action against the theocrats pushing them and their troops to ruin.
Fanatics don’t reason, and the United States cannot afford to allow the world to see it deterred by the words and shaking fists of a second- or third-rate military equipped with bluster and ballistic missiles.
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 6pm 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.
