JFK wrote, Why England Slept, caught unawares by Hitler — so, too, the US
As evil men fall and some good people pay the ultimate price, prayer and fear and cautious hope stand behind the American and Israeli soldiers in the thick of the battle against the cruel clique controlling Iran.
War is to be avoided until the the price of peace is too high to pay — because it would be worse than war.
It is perfectly clear what Iran has done to its own citizens. Iran has for decades murdered them and otherwise rendered them expendable obstacles to higher goals: nuclear bombs to be used against Israel and the West.
It is perfectly clear what Iran has done to Israel. Iran has unleashed Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis against Israel.
It is perfectly clear what Iran, via Hamas, has done to Gazans; what Iran, via Hezbollah, has done to Lebanese; what Iran, via Houthis, has done to Yemen; and what Iran, via the Assads, has done to Syria.
The evil of Iran is perfectly clear.
It is not perfectly clear to everyone why Israel and the US attacked Iran now. According to The New York Times and its intellectual allies, Iran poses no clear threat. Iran is too weak to attack the United States; it would take Iran a decade to become powerful enough to threaten the US. Thus, the current attack on Iran is deemed reckless, without a clear rationale or end game.
Remember Dec. 7, 1941?
The US waited until Japan and Nazi Germany posed a clear threat before acting. How did that turn out? Millions of people died who would have lived had the US acted against Hitler as he was building his arsenal, before he posed a clear threat.
As a young man, the future American President John F. Kennedy wrote Why England Slept — why it did nothing to disarm Hitler before he became a clear threat.
President Trump did not wait. Israel did not wait.
It is difficult to discern the rationale of Congresspeople and others who think the US and Israel should have waited . . . for what?
For weeks and months and years of more bad faith Iran negotiations, while it enriches unranium?
Has Iran not strung out these negotiations long enough — for 20 years? That’s the time that the UN says that Iran lied to its nuclear inspectors. That’s the time that Iran hid its nuclear research and its construction of everything it takes to make a nuclear weapon, save the weapon itself.
Would the critics of Trump and Israel prefer that Iran possess nuclear weapons before acting?
After President Trump gave Iran one last chance and Iran did not alter its fundamental position, what more should one wait for?
Camera: Pan to Iran’s missiles.
Should Israel and the US have waited until Iran built enough missiles to destroy Israel before acting? Very convenient, isn’t it, that when it is said that Iranian poses no clear, present threat to the US, the threat to Israel is ignored.
Remember — the Jews supposedly went to their slaughter during the Holocaust. But now, with the powerful memory of the Holocaust, Jews now preempt their enemies rather than wait long enough for a threatened repeat of the Holocaust.
Overwrought, you say? Verbal overkill? Actually, the Holocaust is the preferred, the choice, the repeated, the worshiped language of Iran’s “religious” leaders themselves. (Do you hate, as we do, the ayatollahs’ obscene corruption of the word “religious?”)
No, it was not hasty of Trump and Israel to act against Iran. Not reckless to stop it before a repeat of Pearl Harbor — of Dec. 7, 1941, Middle East-style —with far more lethal weapons now than in 1941.
It might have taken some time for Iran to rebuild its nuclear program, but it took only eight months for Iran to rebuild its missile program. Ask the victims in Israel. Ask Iran’s missile targets in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and Iraq — mainly airports and hotels. Reportedly, Iran thought their attacks on all these countries would convince them to press the US to stop. As of now, at least, it seems the opposite; these countries are angry, motivated to retaliate against Iran.
In the space of two days Iran has managed to convince these Gulf countries what Israel has known for decades: Iran cannot be trusted. Its word cannot be believed.
President Trump is to be congratulated for acknowledging that the American and Israeli action against Iran in June, 2025 was insufficient. But the call of the hour for the vast majority of us who are not engaged in either the fighting or the decision-making is something else, something different: humble prayer and loud advocacy.
Psalms a-plenty have poured forth around the world, including in Denver and the intermountain West, since the outbreak of the attacks on Saturday, Feb. 28.
“May the L-rd fulfill your every request” (Psalm 20:6).
“Our enemies say, ‘Come, let us destroy them as a nation; let Israel’s name be remembered no more’” (Psalm 83:4, 5).
“Out of the depths, I call to You, L-rd” (Psalm 130:1).
“They cried to the L-rd in their trouble, and He rescued them (or delivered them) from their distress” (107:6, 14, 19, 28).
“He pours contempt on those tyrants, and makes them wander in a trackless waste” (107:40).
Same place: Persia. Same season: Purim. Same intent: genocide. Same denouement: the tyrant defeated. Specificially, on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026 — “the Sabbath of Remembrance” of Amalek (Deut. 25:17-19), of the paradigm of evil — not only was the defeat of Amalek’s ancient descendant Haman remembered. Haman’s ethnic and ideological descendant Ayatollah Khamenei was also remembered, his dream of the extermination of the Jewish people thwarted, just like Haman’s and Amalek’s. Some place. Same season. Same denouement.
These aren’t just stories; they’re history. And not just history, but Divine intervention in history.
As the war rages, it is our job to pray — and to advocate, to explain the rationale behind this war to the naysayers. Not incidentally, the naysayers do not include Iranians in Iran and around the world who are singing and dancing over Khamenei’s fall. They know that the alternative to war is thousands more Iranians murdered by the regime.
© IJN 2026
