The Houthis are the last straw. Iran’s mullahs are behind just about everything bad that is happening in the Middle East–Hamas, Hezbollah, interference in Iraq and now the Houthis. With serious threat of a wider war, and now an unacceptable disruption of international shipping, the mullahs have to go. And they need to go now, since they are very close to having nuclear weapons, which will complicate any effort to depose them. …

The U.S. military is said to have contingency plans for all kinds of unlikely events. No doubt there is a plan or two for getting rid of the mullahs, although in recent years planning has probably turned more toward pronouns and sex change operations. In any event, those plans should be dusted off and updated.

[This is a lot easier said than done, and now there’s a wild card involved: ISIS. They are already attempting to effect regime change of their own in Iran, as their recent attack on the Soleimani commemoration shows, part of a grudge formed when Iran helped destroy al-Baghdadi’s ‘caliphate.’ If we even could knock out the mullahs and the IRGC, ISIS could seize power in the vacuum … which we have already seen in Iraq, *twice*. Anyway, we probably shouldn’t try a military regime change on Iran, but we’d better stop pretending that Iran hasn’t been at war with us since 1979. That would be a good start for American foreign policy. — Ed]