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Steady hands, keen eyes, and strong concentration are needed to get a tiny thread through the tiny hole of a tiny needle. Try threading a needle amid stormy winds.

That, my friends, is the essence of diplomacy. Throw in a rogue nuclear state and you are threading a needle in high winds.

Saturday evening the world stopped wondering. Social media had been abuzz with rumors of war. Influencers influencing. Politicians politicking. So-called neocons called for military intervention, while isolationists claimed there is never a just cause for war. Somewhere in the middle were the actual decision makers who bear the burden of threading the needle. And on Saturday the decision makers let it be known that Iran’s nuclear facilities are no more.

In the end, the pundits and politicos are not the ones history will judge.

Toward the end of the 19th century, Alfred Nobel was shocked to read his own obituary in the newspaper, which declared, “The Merchant of Death is dead.” It went on to say, “Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died yesterday, devised a way for more people to be killed in a war than ever before, and he died a very rich man.”

It was Nobel’s older brother who died. But the paper’s error had a dramatic impact. “Every man ought to have the chance to correct his epitaph in midstream and write a new one,” Nobel later said. That moment became the inspiration for the Nobel Prize.

Nobel determined to thread the needle. He could not control that what he intended for good might also cause harm. He determined to promote the more positive aspects for which some chastised him.

Which brings us back to today. President Trump is in the unenviable position of threading the diplomacy needle in storm winds. He has made it very clear for over a decade that he will not abide a nuclear Iran. He has made equally clear his distaste for protracted war.

America is jaded about war. An entire generation of Americans grew up in the post-9/11 world with U.S. troops fighting on foreign soil. There is a genuine and understandable fatigue with the idea of perpetual war. Americans deserve peace.

We want peace. But we have rarely known extended periods of peace. As a third-generation war veteran, I don’t want to see another ground war in my lifetime.

However, we have just witnessed military recruiting numbers soar, and the president of the United States recited the oath of enlistment to U.S. soldiers and recruits at the Army parade. They didn’t raise their right hand to serve because they don’t believe in the need to have a strong military. Americans know that the strength of arms is the most capable means of deterrence, and a hammer that must strike at times.

It is the storm-blown needle threaded by every president since George Washington.

Let’s consider the opposition in this needle-threading storm. Iran has been killing U.S. troops, fomenting discord, and supplying terrorists for decades. Fifty-two Americans were taken hostage within months of the ayatollah seizing power. Two hundred forty-one Marines were killed in the Beirut barracks bombing. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed in the USS Cole attack. Over 600 U.S. troops were killed by Iranian influence in Iraq.

The ayatollahs have made very clear that their aim is to damage or destroy the U.S. and wipe out Israel. When your enemies tell you what they want to do to you, there is no wisdom in ignoring them. If Iran achieved its dream of becoming a nuclear power, what would it do with it? Would they sit back, fold their hands and feel good about themselves? Would they use it for world peace? Would they be satisfied with just having a nuke? The answer to all of that is “no.”

A nuclear Iran would be an immediate threat to regional stability. Saudi Arabia would then put their endless resources into developing and/or acquiring nuclear weapons itself. Bad actors on the world stage would be negotiating with the ayatollahs to buy nukes on the black market from the same rogue Iran that sold every missile, gun and drone that the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas ever fired. Iran would only be too glad to be courted as the chief supplier of nuclear arms to the evil influences who hate America. Peaceful initiatives like the Abraham Accords could be sacrificed.

Trump is the man of the hour, born for such a time as this. I shudder to think what the world would be like if Biden were still in the Oval Office. Iran’s nuclear ambitions would be the same regardless of who won the election. Biden would have fallen asleep at the wheel while staffers used his autopen to sign DEI proclamations and pardon murderers. In contrast, Trump canceled part of his high-profile G7 summit to return to the White House Situation Room and stay on top of some of the most dangerous and stormy times the world has seen in recent history.

Andrew Jackson, of whom Trump is very fond, said, “I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me.” Trump was born for storms – in fact, I think he was born to thread needles in storms.

Trump has access to information and intelligence that no one in the world of social media influencers have. I believe it keeps him up all night as he works to

thread that needle in the stormy winds. I don’t believe we will see U.S. troops on Iranian soil, but we are seeing U.S. bombs on foreign soil. I do believe we will see U.S. sanctions imposed heavily on Iran. It was a decision that had to be made. It was a threat that had to be stopped. It was a needle that had to be threaded.

These are dangerous times. Influencers and pundits, neocons and isolationists.

They all have their role in the social discourse. But my prayers are for the man who threads the needle.