Despite the hatred, ridicule, and contempt constantly directed at  Donald Trump, he has demonstrated again, as long maintained in this column, that he will go down as one of the greatest leaders the West has known. His short, sharp clinical intervention, using massively powerful, uniquely American and absolutely necessary weapons, was precisely what was needed.

Given the Iranian regime’s primary targets are both Israel and the US, it was right and proper that the US intervention was effected in alliance with Israel, which, despite being extremely small, is one of the most advanced countries in the world, led by that great statesman, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Guided by common sense, preferring plain speaking and amusing banter, and courageous under attack (as we saw near Butler, Pennsylvania), President Trump’s strong, overriding instinct is to be guided by Sun Tzu’s eternal truth: that the supreme art of war is to ‘subdue the enemy without fighting’.

The Iranian intervention reveals the corollary to this maxim. This is that when fighting becomes unavoidable, a wise ruler will make it as minimal and as clinical as possible.

Trump is also strongly guided by his detestation of what he correctly regards as parasitism, or as Antipodeans put it, ‘bludging’. Australians know this well, living under a hard-left government that increasingly embarrasses the nation by posing as world-class bludgers, with a Prime Minister too lacking in courage to face his moment of truth with Donald Trump in the White House.

Meanwhile, the emerging Trump Doctrine proclaims that an ally should never stoop to being a dependent but must contribute fully to its defence, and that henceforth, taking advantage of American benevolence is at an end.

Demonstrating his strength, Donald Trump is one of the few who have not succumbed to the failing commonality among Western leaders and politicians. This is manifested in their naive or pretended belief in climate catastrophism, a hoax the ultimate beneficiaries of which are easily explained by observing the maxim, ‘Cui bono?’ or, as it is put today, ‘Follow the money’.

This will take one through shady power brokers and other associates, finally leading to the CCP in Beijing.

The failings Donald Trump could never be accused of are obviously cowardice or naïveté. But In their dealings with Iran, a common criticism which could fairly be made of a succession of presidents, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, is that they were, at best, extraordinarily naive.

President Carter pulled the rug from under the West’s great Middle-Eastern ally, the Shah, with the result that he was replaced by the same seventh-century backward terrorist regime lying today to obtain, by hook or by crook, the most potent 21st-century nuclear weapons to use against the so-called ‘Little Satan’, Israel, and the ‘Great Satan’, the USA. Carter inexplicably changed the long-standing policy of strong support for the West’s principal Middle-Eastern ally to one of challenging it, particularly over a more authoritarian form of government, the introduction of which was encouraged by the Americans and the British in 1953.

In that he naively forgot Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reported reference to Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza García, ‘He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.’ Carter publicly criticised the government and unwisely engaged with opposition groups, including the future bloodthirsty dictator, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who would horrify the civilised world with his fatwa for the murder of author Salman Rushdie. Carter’s action was taken despite the fact that the Shah’s ‘White Revolution’ had enriched the country, built up manufacturing and the infrastructure, improved education, liberated women and, above all, made Iran a respected pro-Western  Middle-Eastern power. Little wonder his reign is remembered by many as a ‘Golden Age’.

Then, after 34 years of the mullahs’ criminal delinquency, Barack Obama negotiated a deal with them, the  Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Under this, Iran promised that in return for restricting its nuclear programme to peaceful purposes, funds held under sanctions, reported to be up to $300 billion, would be released.

Strongly opposed by Benjamin Netanyahu,  Obama naively claimed it blocked every possible pathway to build a nuclear bomb.

On his first election, Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement, imposing sanctions so powerful that the regime was in danger of collapse.

But when  Joe Biden took the presidency in questionable circumstances, he lifted all sanctions and handed over to the mullahs a sum of up to $300 billion. This enabled the mullahs to fund their several terrorist proxies’ appalling crimes, including the surprise attack on Israel by the mullahs’ proxy, Hamas, on 7 October 2023. Hostages were taken, and more Jews, even babies, were butchered than at any time since the Holocaust, leading inexorably to a series of confrontations between Israel and Iran.

When President Trump’s 60-day ultimatum to Iran in April to denuclearise was rejected, Israel attacked. On the same day, the International Atomic Energy Agency  declared Iran again in breach of the 1968  Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

As the Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, often highly critical of Mr Trump, observed, ‘No recent president except Trump would have allowed Israel to take this action.’

If, after President Trump’s intervention,  the regime survives or is replaced by a similar regime, they are sure to continue to seek to obtain nuclear weapons, possibly through the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran-Pyongyang Axis.

Fundamental regime change is crucial, but Donald Trump is likely not to want to be directly involved. The US has a mixed experience – just contrast the success in Japan with the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In any event, the monarchy could ideally be restored under the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi.

He encourages the overthrow of the regime, followed by a 100-day interim transition period, after which a referendum would be held on the preferred form of secular and democratic government.

He appears to have support among the émigré community, suggesting we all ‘imagine a democratic secular Iran living at peace with its neighbours’.

Reza Pahlavi certainly offers a democratic, tried-and-tested solution.