It has been a long time since a Western country has won a war.

It can now be said that Israel has won its war on Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, with the assistance of the United States — and, in particular, President Donald Trump.

On Oct. 7, 2023, the genocidal terror group Hamas invaded Israel's borders and killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly Jewish; they abducted 250 Israelis and took them back to their terror tunnel hellholes. Those tunnels, as well as Hamas' vast arsenal of rockets, grenades and small arms, had been built up over the course of 20 years, with the support and funding of nations in the region including Iran, Qatar and Turkey.

That terrible day, Israel didn't just face down Hamas. It faced down a similarly genocidal and far better-armed Iranian terror proxy on its northern border in Hezbollah, which had hundreds of thousands of rockets, tens of thousands of which were armed with targeting technology; over the course of the next months, Israel's north would be emptied of civilians due to barrages of drones and rockets sent from Lebanese territory. Israel also faced down a continuing terror threat from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank; Syria, which was used as a thoroughfare for Iranian arms for Hezbollah; Iran-backed Iraqi terror groups; the Houthis in Yemen; and the Iranian government, which wasn't merely spreading terrorism but pursuing a nuclear weapon.

Two years later, the world has turned upside down.

Israel has decimated Hamas, killing its entire top leadership from Gaza to Iran. Israel has destroyed Hezbollah's efficacy and killed its terror master Hassan Nasrallah — and its attacks on Hezbollah have been so effective that the Assad regime in Syria completely collapsed, with a little push from the Turkish-backed terror group HTS. Judea and Samaria have been quieted by the work of the IDF. Iranian proxies in Iraq have gone silent, too. The Houthis in Yemen have been bombed thoroughly — and while they remain a nuisance, they are not an existential threat. And Iran's nuclear program has been set back years if not decades, thanks to the courage of the Israeli Air Force and a timely and brave intervention from Trump.

And now, Trump has brokered an unthinkable deal: the release of the final 20 live Israeli hostages, with Israel maintaining a secure posture in the Gaza Strip; the possibility of a non-Hamas future in Gaza, supported by regional allies; the even greater possibility of future Abraham Accords with countries like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.

So, how did this happen?

It happened the same way things always happen in the Middle East: The decisionmakers ignored the conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom said that military action could not guarantee security. That wasn't just wrong; it was catastrophically wrong: It was military action that took out the supporting pillars beneath Hamas' feet. The conventional wisdom said that the United States ought to play a peculiar neutral role between Israel and its genocidal enemies. That wasn't just wrong; it was idiotically wrong: The Trump administration's open support for Israel's military victory led to actual victory. The conventional wisdom said that threatening to kill terror leaders abroad would be conflagrationist. That, too, was wrong: It was Israel's willingness to kill terror masters in Iran and Qatar that led to Qatar and Turkey deciding to press for Hamas' ouster, with a carrots-and-sticks approach led by Trump.

For understanding the Middle East better than all the so-called experts — and the isolationists in his own party, who wanted to reject Trump's tempered and rational Peace Through Strength in favor of Cowardice Through Catastrophism — Trump undoubtedly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who soldiered through withering criticism both at home and abroad for the great crime of seeking victory over those who would destroy his country, deserves extraordinary credit as well. The greatest credit goes to the Israeli people, who mobilized in an unprecedented way to defend their nation and their civilization — and to the American people, who provided Israel the support it needed to finally win, both in terms of material and by electing Donald J. Trump president of the United States.

Victory is indeed possible. It just requires the desire to win, the willingness to win and the perspicacity to dismiss those who promote either a starry-eyed millenarianism or a benighted conventional wisdom that fails every time it's tried.

Ben Shapiro is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author. To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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