Townhall Review | Conservative Commentary On Today's News

The Iranians had one reasonable chance to negotiate an end to the war. Donald Trump sent J.D. Vance, reportedly a skeptic of military action, to Islamabad to lead the American delegation. The Pakistan government urged the Iranians to take this seriously. Instead, the IRGC junta refused to negotiate at all on the main points of the conflict, especially their pursuit of nuclear weapons and claims of sovereign control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Then: Trump ordered a blockade of all Iranian shipping through the Strait—a move that will cost Iran’s regime $450 million dollars a day in lost sales and eliminate their only reliable method of resupply during the war. The Iranians threatened to escalate, but Trump has his own escalation options too.

As military analyst Sascha Bruchmann told a German news program, the Battle of Hormuz is a game of chicken, and “it is dangerous to play a game of chicken against Donald Trump.”

That’s the lesson the world ought to be learning. It’s a lesson we need to see through to the end in Iran.

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The ceasefire in Iran will be a big win for President Trump if the Strait opens and stays open—and we’ll know over the course of the two weeks whether or not that happens.

If it does: The world’s oil supply will surge a bit and the remnants of the Iranian regime will have a chance to inventory the destruction that has rained down on their forces for five weeks.

If the Strait doesn’t reopen—or the attacks on Israel or our Gulf allies don’t cease—another round of the third Gulf war will soon commence.

President Trump issued his ultimatum. His never-evolving critics denounced his language though it got through to whomever is running the bunkers in Iran.

The war is far from over, but long conflicts never resolve in a month, and this one is 47 years old.

Fundamental things are afoot in the Middle East, most of them very good indeed.

Freedom for the long-suffering Iranian people and stability in the Middle East has never been closer since 1979..

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President Trump has done what seven presidents before him would not: he demolished the leading state sponsor of terrorism’s leadership, military, and nuclear abilities. For this, alone, the Nobel Peace Prize seems not quite enough.

We shall see if the temporary cease-fire holds; perhaps it is a moment of calibration that may require further military action, as President Trump has shown his mettle in doing with Iran before. And for those who have chosen to ignore or forget Iran’s 47-year war against the United States and the West—slaughtering and maiming untold thousands of Americans and other innocents, including assassination plots against the President—if Iran fully breaks this ceasefire, they will teach the world again who they are and what they do.

Meanwhile, critics blame Donald Trump for his rhetoric—of course having said nothing about the routine calls of genocide from Iran’s leadership or, for that matter, hundreds of thousands who take to the streets shouting, “From the river to the sea.”

This is a moment to thank President Trump, not condemn him.

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King Charles of Great Britain has sparked outrage and made one of the great unforced errors of recent UK history. After hosting an iftar at Windsor Castle last year and delivering messages for the Muslim holidays of Eid and Ramadan this year, he refused to offer an Easter message.

The decision is striking. As King, Charles is the head of the Christian Church of England. And his country is deeply polarized amid rising extremism, as well as reports of the government’s years-long institutional failure to investigate and prosecute sexual abuse of young girls by Islamist gangs.

The modern monarchy wields no political power. It exists only to provide a national symbol of unity, stability, and continuity. If it no longer serves that purpose, the taxpayers who subsidize it are justified in asking: What, exactly, is it for?

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March the 1st marked the death of one of the most infamous murderers in American history. Abortionist Kermit Gosnell died in prison custody at the age of 85.

Dr. Gosnell went to prison for committing the most heinous abortionist murder imaginable—he delivered babies who were born alive and then killed those babies. He inserted scissors into their spinal column and labeled their deaths as abortion.

One trial witness said that a baby killed by Dr. Gosnell had “made noises, a whine, like my baby.”

Let’s just understand how the law is operating right now.

It is unlikely that those legal consequences would ever have come if Dr. Gosnell had used some other technique where his evil was not so obvious, where it was not so well-documented.

The moral urgency of abortion, and even late-term abortion, is more apparent and horrific than any of us would want to see. That’s why we must press on in the fight for life.

Human dignity depends upon that defense all the way from fertilization until healthy birth.

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It’s a story that fills you with a very American kind of pride. In a risky and costly operation, the US rescued the missing pilot who had been shot down over Iran.

The operation involved hundreds of intelligence and military personnel, Navy SEAL Team Six, Army Delta Force, CIA operatives who carried out a deception campaign, even the destruction of two damaged aircraft, all to find one man.

Some questioned why America would go to such extraordinary lengths just to recover a single pilot. Of course, we wanted to deny Iran a propaganda victory and access to any intelligence the pilot possessed, but there’s more to it than that.

We come from a Judeo‑Christian worldview. We believe every life is precious. We honor our fighting men and women, and we don’t leave any of them behind.

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The Washington Post, and others, are upset that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is hosting monthly worship services at the Pentagon.  Unconstitutional, they say … Upending of norms … Breaking cohesion.

Are they kidding us? 

First, I want my soldiers—especially in a time of war—being reverent and prayerful.  Second, just how timid and weak are these Pentagon employees that they have to go off the record and run to the Washington Post to complain about this?

One employee said, “If troops are trained to believe that ‘God is on our side,’ what precludes us from doing anything we want to win?”  I don’t know—ask Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt, who led the largest public prayer in history on the cusp of D-Day.  Ask Dwight Eisenhower who issued a prayer to the soldiers in World War II.  Or, maybe, know that a great deal of just-war theory comes from famous religious leaders of yore.

Journalists today just have no sense of history or context.  Even the Unknown Soldier was known only to God.

I’m Seth Leibsohn.

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This Sunday is Easter, Resurrection Sunday, a great celebration day for Christians marking the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.

The Christian church bears a mandate to proclaim the truth that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and that’s an indispensable truth claim of Christianity.

The resurrected Lord gave the church a sacred commission to take the gospel, the message of Christ’s victory over sin and death to all the world.

So: As the Christian church gathers to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Christians look back in thankfulness to that empty tomb and forward to the fulfillment of Christ’s purposes in us.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the promise of our resurrection from the dead and of Christ's total victory over sin and death. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is at the very center of the Christian gospel. The empty tomb is full of power.

I hope you’ll celebrate Christ’s work on our behalf this weekend.

Happy Easter. Happy Resurrection Day to all. May the joy of the resurrection be yours.

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President Trump is on the cusp of a historic achievement.

If the President oversees the toppling of the ruling regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, his achievements will rank with the greatest of those of any post-World War II president. That’s just an objective fact. If you don’t understand that fact, you haven’t been paying attention for more than 40 years.

Iran is as evil a regime as exists on the planet. It is run by religious fanatics with a peculiar theology, rooted in end-times eschatology and “resistance” up to and especially including martyrdom. It cannot be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction or an arsenal of conventional weapons sufficient to deter normal regimes from stopping it from obtaining WMD, especially obtaining nuclear weapons.

The result needed in the war has not yet been achieved. But if President Trump delivers it, only his critics incapable of basic objectivity will deny the significance of his order to take down the regime that has bedeviled the world for almost a half century.

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Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the holiest week in the Christian calendar. But for Christians in Syria and Nigeria, it was a day marked by bloodshed and tragedy.

In Syria, sectarian attacks in a Christian town damaged homes, shops and cars—as men on motorcycles from a nearby Sunni Muslim town terrorized the community into the early morning hours.

In Nigeria, the violence was even more horrific. Muslim gunmen attacked a university community, killing at least 30 people and injuring many more.

Yet coverage of this violence was scant. Instead, there was widespread media outrage when Israel briefly paused public prayer gatherings due to Iranian missile threats—before quickly reversing course.

There’s a very clear double standard. And it raises serious questions about whether Western media outlets are intimidated by Islamism.

They certainly have not shown courage.

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