Edward Ahmed Mitchell

The regime still hasn’t internalized that President Trump will out-escalate them if he thinks escalation is required to force de-escalation. He is not a conventional Western politician, and Tehran repeatedly miscalculates because it keeps assuming he is.

Hegseth accuses Iran of exporting "a violent, messianic Islamist ideology chasing some sort of apocalyptic endgame"

There are many false claims in this letter but let me address one specifically: that "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation."   This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over.   As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first.   This evidence was compiled from many sources and factors. President Trump would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum.   Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The Iranian regime is evil. It proudly killed Americans, waged war against our country, and openly threatened us all the way up to the launch of Operation Epic Fury.   Iran was aggressively expanding their short-range ballistic missiles to combine with their naval assets to give themselves immunity – meaning they would have a degree of a capabilities that would give them immunity to hold us and the rest of the world hostage.   The regime aimed to use those ballistic missiles as a shield to continue achieving their ultimate goal – nuclear weapons.   The President, through his top negotiators, gave the regime every single possible opportunity to abandon this unacceptable course by permanently giving up their nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief, free nuclear fuel, and potential economic partnerships with our country.   But they would not say yes to peace because obtaining nuclear weapons was their fundamental goal.   President Trump ultimately made the determination that a joint attack with Israel would greatly reduce the risk to American lives that would come from a first strike by the terrorist Iranian regime and address this imminent threat to America’s national security interests.   All of this led to President Trump arriving at the determination that this military operation was necessary for U.S. national security, which is why he launched the massively successful Operation Epic Fury. The Commander-in-Chief determines what does and does not constitute a threat, because he is the one constitutionally empowered to do so - and because the American people went to the ballot box and entrusted him and him alone to make such final judgments. And finally, the absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable. President Trump has been remarkably consistent and has said for DECADES that Iran can NEVER possess a nuclear weapon. As someone who actually witnesses President Trump’s decision-making process on a daily basis, I can attest to the fact that he is always looking to do what’s in the best interest of the United States of America — period. America First.

Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our President and Commander in Chief. As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country.  The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions.  After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.