The Global Fight for Freedom

A month ago, these pages trumpeted Trump’s maximum leverage over Tehran. What happened?
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And two centuries ago, Simón Bolívar shattered an empire. Today, his legacy is being vanquished from a continent—one philosophical heir at a time.
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​Editor’s Note: this week was short on time and long on late breaking evidence—the Iran story alone was rewritten over three times. Accuracy > volume. A full slate of stories and the Freedom Fighter of the Week feature return next week.

Flashpoints

1. Iran and the Spectre of Jimmy Carter
2. Colombia and the "Abyss of a Failed Philosophy"

Country names are followed by their 2026 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking.

In the predawn dark of April 25, 1980, a helicopter lifted off the desert floor of central Iran, drifted sideways in a wall of dust, and slammed into a parked C-130. The fireball lit the night for miles. Eight American servicemen burned in the sand. The mission to rescue 52 hostages in Tehran was dead.
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Days later, Iranian clerics picked through the charred remains on camera. Jimmy Carter went on television, gray and hollow, and took the blame. That November, he lost in a landslide.
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46 years later, another president is staring into the same desert—and flinching.
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On May 4, Trump launched Project Freedom, and the U.S. Navy walked the first merchant ship through the Strait of Hormuz. The next day, these pages declared he had Iran "in a vice," the regime perhaps in its "final throes." Less than 24 hours later, Project Freedom was abruptly halted.
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In the 35 days since, two questions have gnawed at me. Did I overestimate Trump's hand? And if not, why did he pull his punch?
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The mainstream press, unable or unwilling to answer either, reached for cute acronyms—first TACO, then NACHO. Neither survives the facts.
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Take the first question. In May, Iran's crude exports hit zero; total oil shipments fell to 3% of their pre-war level. Inflation runs near 70%, food prices have doubled, and this week, the rial hit another record low. Measured in dollars, Iran's economy has shrunk by nearly 40% since February.
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The vice is real. Its clamping force, crushing. It’s just closing more slowly than expected.
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So why pull Project Freedom’s punch?
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Start with the Saudis. Project Freedom's escorts needed an air umbrella—fighters, radar planes, refuelers—flying out of Prince Sultan Air Base and across Saudi skies. But every time the kingdom hosts an American attack, Tehran answers by raining drones on Saudi oil. The Saudis want Iran bled—they have struck Iran themselves—but not with Riyadh ablaze. Blindsided by Trump's splashy announcement, Riyadh quietly pulled the rug.
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Then the insurance. Washington had stood up a $40 billion war-risk backstop for shippers—but only for vessels under U.S. naval escort. Ship owners and captains were not reassured.
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But the deepest reason sits in the President's own head, which never left 1980. When an Iranian missile downed an F-15E in April and an American airman went missing in the mountains, Trump's own generals locked him out of the Situation Room, fearing his temper would wreck the rescue. He spent hours screaming at aides in a near-empty West Wing, fixated on Carter and the hostages who cost him the presidency.
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So when CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper laid out the plan to take Kharg Island—the rock 15 miles off Iran's coast that moves 90% of its oil—Trump balked. Seizing it meant thousands of Marines storming a hostile shore and holding it under constant missile fire, a ground force his own former envoy wanted deployed the way Rome deployed legions. Trump refused.
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Set aside Trump’s singular credulity for being strung along by strongmen—the unshakable faith that any tyrant can be talked to terms. Trump also fears Carter’s tarnished legacy. He wants an easier, softer way.
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On whether anything short of regime change can truly work, these pages remain skeptical. Tactically, though, Trump may yet pull it off. Iran's one card was to spike oil high enough to break American resolve—and contrary to popular opinion, it has not fully succeeded. Oil supply lines rerouted and held; crude sits at $97, not the $300 the doomsayers promised. As economist Robin J. Brooks notes, it is the third oil panic in recent years, and like the first two, it is fizzling.
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And Project Freedom isn’t dead yet—Bloomberg broke this week that it just went quiet. The U.S. Navy is back in the strait, ships running silently down the Omani coast. Nearly 1,000 crossings since the ceasefire. "A lot of oil is coming into the world," Trump bragged, "that people don't even know about."
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Characteristically hyperbolic, but not entirely wrong.
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But a regime that guns down its own people by the tens of thousands does not flinch at their hunger. Its tolerance for their suffering is bottomless—and it will likely outlast any blockade, unless someone closes the jaw for good.
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This would be a war lost not for lack of force, but for lack of will. The Navy will not lose it. The mullahs cannot win it. Only a man still afraid of a desert in 1980 can.
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​Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Brookings Institution Economist Robert J. Brooks, Bloomberg, Axios, IMF

Across Latin America, the Bolivarians are being vanquished.
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Last year, voters in Chile and Bolivia threw out the socialist left. Now Colombia—heartland of Bolívar's own Gran Colombia—has joined the revolt.
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The Bolivarians sell socialism as liberation: nationalized industry, swollen welfare, poverty-inducing "21st-century revolution" in the mold of Hugo Chávez. For two decades the project has hollowed out a continent, draining Venezuela, Argentina, and other former powers into ruin.
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When we last reported from Colombia in February, right-wing outsider Abelardo de la Espriella—"El Tigre"—was rising from the wreckage of leftist President Gustavo Petro's failures. Petro, the former guerrilla, had launched his "Total Peace" initiative, handing cocaine-trafficking militias the room to regroup and rearm. Cocaine production had hit new highs.
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Espriella was polling at 25%, but was still a long shot. Then came the terror.
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Since April, the FARC-EMC has launched 26 attacks; one highway bombing between Cali and Popayán killed 21. Guerrillas gunned down two of De la Espriella's campaign workers. Earlier, presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe had been assassinated outright—political bloodshed Colombia hadn't witnessed in decades.
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By May 31, El Tigre had surged, securing 43% of the first-round vote to leftist Iván Cepeda's 40%. The runoff comes June 21.
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Petro's disregard for democratic ideals predates the recent violence. He "has repeatedly shown his contempt for the rule of law by attacking Colombia's Congress, courts, and Central Bank," CATO notes. He refused to condemn Maduro's dictatorship—then visited Caracas after the strongman's fall.
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Cepeda, a philosopher trained in the Communist Party, would continue all of it.
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De la Espriella is no savior. In the global right's great philosophical divide between populist authoritarians and economic liberators, he favors Nayib Bukele over Javier Milei, vows CECOT-style mega-prisons, and built his fortune defending Maduro's money launderer.
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He is, in CATO's words, "no classical liberal."
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But he warns that a vote for Cepeda would plunge Colombia into "the abyss of a failed philosophy."
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On that, we can agree. In 12 days, Colombians should too.
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​Sources: CATO Institute, Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press

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