President Donald Trump has made it clear that the U.S. has the capability "to go far longer" than its projected four- to five-week time frame of military operations against Iran.
"This was our last, best chance to strike — what we're doing right now — and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime," he said earlier this week.
Since this weekend, U.S. and Israeli forces have struck and destroyed or severely damaged large parts of Iran's military infrastructure, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command centers, air-defense systems, missile/drone launch sites, and dozens of naval vessels (including at least 17 ships and a submarine), and have hit buildings at the Natanz nuclear site and other strategic military facilities.
Meanwhile, Iran's retaliatory launches have been intercepted or destroyed in flight by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defenses.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior military and security figures have also been eliminated, but Gary Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families and a board member of Christians United for Israel, is mindful that many who are loyal to the Iranian regime remain armed.
"The estimates are that at least a million men in Iran work for the government to oppress the people," he relays. "That's a million men with weapons."
The president said U.S. forces are out to destroy Iran's missile capabilities, wipe out its naval capacity, stop the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and ensure that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct armies outside of their borders.
Experts believe internal and external pressures might combine to threaten the regime without full-scale war, but Bauer finds it difficult to see how successfully destroying those military assets will necessarily lead to an overthrow of the Iranian government.
Still, "every day that we destroy Iranian military assets is a good day for the United States, for Israel, and for free nations around the world," he says.
