LARRY KUDLOW: Trump has smashed Iran’s capabilities for decades

With all the fake news about some kind of $300 billion reparations fund for Iran, and President Obama’s inane remarks that nothing’s changed and nothing’s going change regarding Iran, it’s important to remember how badly America has crippled Iran’s military and its economy.

Here’s President Trump on this fake news fund: "We are not investing any money in Iran, by the way. That rumor got out there yesterday, it was ridiculous. We have the right to go in some day and do if I want to do something or if somebody wants to do something, but we are not investing any money. We have no obligation to invest any money in Iran." 

Mr. Trump added: "We don’t pay them — there was some statement" that "we’re going to spend $300 billion. No, we’re allowed to go and invest if we wanted to. Someday, in the future. We have no obligation whatsoever."

Between the incredible B-2 bunker-busting bombers dropped a year ago in Operation Midnight Hammer, and the incredible devastation wreaked on Iran’s military, and industrial complex from Operation Epic Fury, and the enormous economic and financial hardship imposed on Iran by Economic Fury, the simple straightforward fact is that Iran capabilities to do anything have been virtually obliterated.

And that includes their nuclear capabilities. Their navy is sitting at the bottom of the Arabian Gulf. The country has no air defense. Essentially no radar. All of this with no boots on the ground. The currency is worthless. The economy is shrinking rapidly. The inflation is a couple of hundred percent. If nothing else ever happened by way of deals or arrangements, or penalties, or whatever, Mr. Trump has taken them out probably for twenty years. And that could be an understatement.

Now, if we end their nuclearization altogether, if we get our hands on the enriched uranium, and destroy it, that will be a wonderful gift to the Middle East and the rest of human kind. Even if all the Trumpian red line objectives are not fully met, though, we have still knocked Iran from its Middle East pedestal. They are not the country that Mr. Obama was caving in to.

What Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have done with their decapitations and their bombing obliterations, has at a minimum ended Iranian hegemony in the Middle East. That country, even with its crazy radical Islamists still running at least part of it, is nonetheless a tiny shadowy sliver of its former self because of what America has done to it.

So, as we await the outcome of the memo of understanding and the subsequent technical flushing out of this memo, where I still believe Mr. Trump will make good on his red line pledges and promises, let us not forget how far down Iran has been brought in the past year since the president began his campaign to truly crush Iranian evil.