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As Trump stumbles in Iran, congressional Republicans need to step up

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by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributors - 04/14/26 10:00 AM ET

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by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributors - 04/14/26 10:00 AM ET

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JOINT BASE ANDREWS, MARYLAND – APRIL 12: US President Donald Trump speaks the the media after disembarking from Air Force One on April 12, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Trump returns to Washington after a weekend in Florida. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

President Trump has a serious international messaging problem.

If Republican members of Congress do not stage a timely intervention in accordance with their constitutionally prescribed powers, Trump’s flawed strategic communications portend severe consequences, both for international peace and stability and for U.S. national security.

The danger is illustrated by just the latest in a series of public statements and actions from the commander in chief, and at a time when the U.S. is engaged in a long-term, all-domain cold war with China and Russia, two near-peer nuclear powers that are open strategic partners with the Islamic Republic of Iran and that materially support its existential struggle against the U.S. and the West.

Trump said last week that unless Iran agreed to negotiations about its fate, he would obliterate every bridge and every power plant in the country: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Carrying out such a cataclysmic threat would constitute a massive war crime, and world leaders, including the first American pope, recoiled in horror and disgust that an American president would make such an obscene threat. If put into effect, that plan would destroy much of the civilian population that all U.S. administrations have sought to distinguish from the evil regime that oppresses its population and threatens the world. It would severely punish further the very people that, just weeks ago, the president urged to rise up and attack the clerical regime’s institutions, assuring them that “help is on its way.”

Trump has periodically changed his rhetoric, veering between denying that regime change was ever an actual objective of America’s intervention and claiming that it has already been achieved. His Cabinet members assert that Iran’s key officials, including the Supreme Leader, who were all killed on the first day of the assault, were the regime and that their deaths constitute the entire system’s demise.

But given Iran’s continuing attacks on Israel and Gulf states, and its hate-filled rhetoric toward America and Israel, its core policies of enmity against Western civilization still define the nature of the Islamist Republic of Iran. It has merely been transformed from a fanatical Islamist religious regime to a fanatical Islamist military dictatorship under the violent control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran and its Russian and Chinese allies have been encouraged by Trump’s longstanding opposition to “forever” foreign wars. But Trump has shown that he is no closet pacifist. He has executed successful strikes in Iran to destroy nuclear and missile sites, following the brilliant operation that captured Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator and narco-terrorist, to face U.S. justice.

Yet several aspects of the Iran operation could nevertheless influence China’s assessment of Trump’s intentions in an opposite and dangerous direction, and actually reduce U.S. deterrence of Chinese aggression against Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.

Despite the daring rescue of the downed jet pilots in Iran, Beijing may now perceive that the political cost of risking more American lives and planes before the November elections has soured Trump’s appetite for further military adventures — especially with a formidable foe like China. That impression could actually increase the danger of Beijing acting on its expansionist claims in the region.

A Chinese attack on Taiwan was already made more likely by Trump’s preference for trade deals with adversaries rather than confrontation to protect Western interests, to say nothing of Western values. The adverse development was foreshadowed by Trump’s disparagement of Taiwan’s size and financial power relative to China’s, its failure to arm itself according to Trump’s standards, and its alleged “theft” of America’s computer chip industry.

Trump can mitigate the danger by strengthening the U.S. commitment to Taiwan with a declaratory statement scrapping Washington’s policy of strategic ambiguity on its defense. He should also expedite U.S. arms sales to Taiwan — before his ill-advised trip to China.

Further,