Please Click LIKE at the bottom of this commentary, and share it everywhere!! By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot – Commentary

Political analysts, think-tank sorts, some religious and/or theocratic scholars, and various other critics have been quick to argue that President Trump is “mismanaging the war” because he simply “does not understand radical Islam or the Iranian regime’s death-cult mindset.” Some on the right side of the aisle also claim that “Trump is losing the war.” Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. I believe our president has a much better understanding of the radical Islamic mindset than do some of his critics, I believe he has a much deeper understanding of the broader Middle East mindset than his critics claim he has, and I know that there is no easy way to fight ANY war, especially one with so many moving pieces as this one.

While President Trump’s primary stated purpose for this war is to prevent Iran from ever having a nuclear weapon, we all know that the only way to ensure that is to create regime change in Iran. Here’s the problem with the U.S. engineering regime change – we have a terrible success rate in doing that. Viet Nam, Korea, and several recent attempts in the Middle East…including in Iran in 1979 leap to mind. But that’s not the only issue we face. Go too fast and you create a vacuum of power. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, don’t want to do that again.

Go too slow, you wind up as a tourist in Hanoi pretending it was an adventure on your bucket list for decades.

Go it alone and you’re screwed. Get Israel to lead the effort and you alienate the rest of the Middle East and lose any strategic or political influence you ever had in the region, thus opening the door TO that region to geopolitical advisories.

Pave the way by hammering the Iranian regime’s military into the sand, blast away their ability to engage in command and control operations,  team up with Israel to play a lethal game of Whack-a-Mullah, and squeeze the regimes economic life-line dry – now you’re onto something, but you still need inside help from a group that the rest of the neighborhood finds acceptable.

There seems to be no shortage of critics out there who demand that we arm the freedom fighters so they can fight from the inside to take down the Iranian regime, and while that, at surface value seems appropriate, it just isn’t that simple. First, there’s the problem of HOW to covertly introduce enough weapons into a country so overtly brutal and tyrannical that they murder their own people just because somebody ratted them out, or because, as happened just last week, a young man and a young woman in the medical field dared to treat somebody who had been injured in an uprising.

The IRGC has eyes everywhere, and they don’t rely on evidence…just on their own paranoia, but also note, that in the videos showing U.S. strikes against Iranian targets made and posted by Iranian people from the ground, what’s missing – the incessant wailing of “Allahu Akbar” that has been the hallmark of better than two decades of similar videos regarding U.S. strikes throughout various military campaigns against Islamic countries. That’s an important distinction because it points to the fact that the regime’s iron-clad ideological hold over their own people, even enforced by brutal tyranny, has dramatically faded.

And second…who should we arm? Pragmatically, it’s dicey, and here’s why – there is no one unified freedom fighter force within Iran, but there are a good many factions some of which border on tribal in both nature, and ideology.

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, which is  a Leftist-Islamist militant organization looking to replace the current regime with a transitional government led by NCRI leader Maryam Rajavi, abjectly rejecting both the Supreme Leader DuJour OR a return to the monarchy under Pahlavi. Arm them, and I think you’re asking for trouble.

Baluch Separatists which consists of a coalition of Baluch minority militant factions (including Jaish al Adl) that recently unified to aggressively fight the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) inside the Sistan and Baluchestan province. They’re new, they seem to be a small group, and it is unknown whether or not they can organize across demographics to unify other factions. MAYBE worth a look, but with no margin for error, not worth the risk.

Monarchists and Pro-Democracy Diaspora which is the group with which we are most acquainted. These are billed as the secular, constitutional monarchist, and pro-republic freedom fighters who support the Crown Prince, Pahlavi, and want a peaceful transition of power and a referendum to determine Iran’s future political system. THAT’S who most believe SHOULD be the group we should be trying to arm if there becomes a way to do it on a large enough scale to be successful, but this group of “freedom fighters” are often at both political and ideological odds with the People’s Mojahedin Organization which wants nothing to do with Pahlavi OR his supporters.

Kurdish Separatist and Militant Coalitions which was just formed in February 2026 and wants to bring down the Iranian regime to secure Kurdish self-determination by claiming part of Western Iran as their own territory. They do have experience and they are good, tough-as-nails fighters, but they also have a more tribal ideology and they will want land in return for helping to topple the Iranian regime which, in the long term could become problematic.

Pahlavi is obviously the most well-known to the west potential future leader of Iran should the current regime fall and therefore seems like the odds-on favorite, but there is also an unknown problem with the aforementioned pro-Pahlavi Diaspora in that they too are made up of two distinct factions. The first faction, very supportive of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi’s father, fled Iran when the Shah was forced out and most made their way to the United States, and became successful in our country’s business world.

The second Diaspora faction hated the Shah and were, in fact, leftist Socialist/Communists who thought they could control the Ayatollah, which backfired on them when the Islamist regime started rounding them up and executing them.

The second Diaspora also fled to the U.S. but never gave up their hatred for western capitalism, settling into our academic institutions and into our liberal media.

To be fair, most of the Iranian people we refer to as “freedom fighters” within Iran today, those most involved in the more recent populist uprisings against the regime, are at least a generation removed from the first Diaspora but have heard the stories of what Iran was like before the Islamist revolution of 1979. They want the Iran their parents had, and the cult of death cleric regime out. But here’s the problem that most critics of President Trump don’t know…the “freedom fighters” inside Iran, while enthusiastic, are not trained fighters, and they have no weapons with which to take the fight to the IRGC.

For now, President Trump has held off on arming the Iranian “freedom fighters” but it isn’t so much abandoning those people as it is being pragmatic once you know the risks involved.

I also believe there are many people, Trump critics and supporters alike who believe it was solely politically or ideologically based uprising in January. It wasn’t. It was heavily ECONOMICALLY based. The Iranian people, though they long for freedom, rose up in January because they were being bled dry economically by the regime…and it has gotten worse.

Recent reports coming from the Iranian people indicate that even their bank accounts have been drained by the regime, which led to the protests in the streets a week or so ago.

While that’s a bad situation for the Iranian people in the short-term, it is also a clear sign that President Trump, by squeezing the regime economically, using the Strait of Hormuz as a vise, is managing this war correctly by cutting off the one thing the radical Islamist death-cult MUST have to maintain their hold over the people, and regional influence…money.

President Trump, strategically, politically and diplomatically has to thread the needle. His strategy of bombing the Iranian regime while bleeding the regime economically dry while using the pauses to gather intel regarding the IRGC’s movements as they expose more and more of their hidden and buried weapons bunkers then bombing those, watching, gathering more intel and hitting them over and over is unlike anything we’ve seen before, and might be why it’s frustrating to some of his critics.

It’s slower than many would like, it’s more methodical than his critics want, and it’s more pragmatic than his critics want to be, but it is working.

What comes next will be the key.

Back the Kurds. It really is the smartest move and here’s why. They’re ready. They’re trained. They have grit and they want the radical Islamist Iranian regime gone. The organization is new, but their roots go all the way back to the Ottoman Empire. While they have a more tribal foundation, they are not radicalized religious cultists like the current Iranian regime – not even close. They have been dismissed by a good deal hard-line Middle Eastern countries, been discarded by some, like Turkey, and disrespected by many, but they have no beef with Israel, nor does Israel have any beef with the Kurds.

The Kurds will be willing to facilitate regime change from the ground inside Iran while the Iranian “freedom fighters” take to the streets, and the “freedom fighters” will be far more willing to take to the streets knowing they have trained, armed boots on the ground fighting the battles. U.S. air superiority continuing to rain hell from above along with Israeli intel (Mossad) providing logistical strike targeting from the ground just adds to the package.

And here’s the most interesting aspect in all of this – the Kurds do not want to become the new government controlling Iran. All they want is their own small nation state where they are their own government. Right now, they have a province of sorts within the northern part of Iraq, bordering Iran, and Iraq would be well-served to give them that bit of land permanently.

Once the Iranian regime is gone, Pahlavi, likely as the new leader of Iran, would also be well-served to give up an equal parcel on Iran’s side of the border as a sign of respect to the all-too-often disrespected Kurds. That would also go a long way toward stabilizing relations and preventing future conflicts between Iran, and Iraq.

With the Islamist Iranian regime eliminated, their proxies will be out of business, and that will be welcome news to the Arab States who Iran and Iran’s proxies have been firing missiles and drones at since this war began. The Strait of Hormuz will become an international super waterway for unrestricted commerce and the global economy will flourish.

Yes, it is a best case scenario, but it is within reach ONLY because of the actions of two leaders…President Trump and his pragmatic strategy, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, and his rock-solid, steadfast determination to be the shining light of democracy in the most turbulent region on Earth.

In my commentary next week, I’ll delve even deeper into the “Iran War – Options vs Alternatives Part 2.”

 Copyright © 2026 Craig Andresen / thenationalpatriot.com all rights reserved

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For more political commentary please visit my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner Diane Sori’s latest Op-Ed at The Patriot Factor,

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RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS…LIVE! 

Tomorrow, Tuesday, July 2128th. from 7 to 8:30pm EST, RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS Craig Andresen and Diane Sori discuss ‘‘‘’; “The Iran War – Options vs. Alternatives Part 1,”and important news of the day. Tune in to RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS on https://rspradio1.com Click ‘LISTEN LIVE.’