America First is not a license to look away. It is a mandate to act before the threat arrives. October 7 was not simply a tactical surprise. Every Israeli security professional understood the threat was building. What failed was the assumption that a regime committed to annihilation would accept containment. It does not. It uses time to rearm. America was accumulating the same bill - for the same reason.
Between October 2023 and November 2024, Iranian proxies attacked U.S. forces more than 180 times. Three Americans were killed. More than 180 were wounded. The enemy did not de-escalate. It took notes.
Iran’s Expansion Beyond the Middle East
Anyone who still sees Iran as a regional problem is missing the picture. At the Panama Canal, Hezbollah operatives mapped vulnerabilities in one of America’s most critical trade arteries. In New York, a Hezbollah cell surveilled JFK Airport and federal buildings. Across Latin America, a DEA-documented network flooded American streets with cocaine and channeled profits into weapons and terrorism.
The clearest signal came from Venezuela. On January 3, 2026, U.S. forces captured Nicolas Maduro and flew him to New York. His regime was not a bystander. It was a platform – hosting Iranian personnel, financial networks, and drone operations. Venezuela showed that Iran’s war against America was no longer confined to the Middle East. Parts of that infrastructure had already moved closer to home.
The Architecture of Iran’s Strategy
These were not isolated incidents. They were parts of a single Iranian plan - one aimed directly at the United States. Tehran was assembling three lines of effort simultaneously: proxies and drones to strike, chokepoints to squeeze, and nuclear threshold to shield it all from retaliation.
By the time Maduro was captured, the first two elements were already in place. Only the third remained. The danger was not any single theater, but what happens when all of it connects: a regime that can strike through proxies, squeeze through chokepoints, and then dare America to respond under a nuclear umbrella. The question is not why now, but what it will cost later - when it is deeper underground, better financed, and nuclear.
Diplomacy alone no longer changed the calculus. The issue was no longer violations or deadlines, but delay itself.
When the White House launched Operation Epic Fury, diplomacy had already run its course. According to U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, Iranian negotiators said they possessed enough 60 percent enriched uranium for eleven nuclear bombs. Iran already had the ability to strike and squeeze. It was racing to secure was the shield.
The Cost of Waiting
While diplomacy bought time, Iran used it. By February 2026, satellite imagery showed the entrances to Isfahan’s underground tunnel complex sealed beneath layers of earth. Iran was not backing away. It was hardening the program against attack.
That matters because a near-nuclear Iran is more dangerous not only for the bomb itself, but for what it enables. Every other part of its strategy becomes harder to reverse - proxies grow bolder and maritime coercion harder to answer. Every future American president faces the same confrontation later - under worse conditions, against a more protected adversary.
Break Iran’s ability to strike. Target its proxies, command-and-control networks, and missile and drone arsenals. Disrupt its ability to squeeze. Destroy its capacity to threaten the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab – where it can influence what Americans pay at the pump. And break the shield before it closes. Prevent a nuclear threshold from becoming cover for everything else.
Victory vs. Half Victory
The greatest danger is not failure, but half victory. If America strikes and stops short, it leaves Iran with a reconstruction timeline, a revenge motive, and a survival narrative. Incomplete campaigns teach the same lesson: the adversary absorbs the blow, claims survival as victory, and rebuilds under harder cover.
Full victory has a clear, measurable definition: the permanent elimination of Iran’s enrichment capacity, the destruction of its missile and drone arsenals, and the collapse of the financial networks supporting its proxy system. That is not escalation without limit. That is a finished war. A half victory is an invitation to the next round - on worse terms, at greater cost.
The Real Meaning of America First
The 2026 National Defense Strategy explicitly warns that the United States must never be vulnerable to nuclear blackmail. That language was written before Operation Epic Fury. It describes exactly what a nuclear-threshold Iran would have produced.
The United States is not fighting Iran for Israel. It is fighting Iran because Iran built the infrastructure to bring this war to America - through proxies, ports, and illicit networks - while racing to shield it with nuclear progress. Stopping it before the shield closed was not a favor to any ally. It was the price of avoiding a far greater one later.
America First does not mean waiting until the system is complete. It means recognizing that the price of stopping it now is lower than the price of facing it later - armed, shielded, and already at the door.
Aviram Bellaishe is the Vice President of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA).
This op-ed is published in partnership with a coalition of organizations that fight antisemitism across the world. Read the previous article by Adam Milstein.