Thomas Friedman publicly expressed he does not want the fall of Iran to be credited to Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu, despite saying the Iranian regime deserves to fall; the piece examines his record, the facts about Iran’s attacks on Americans, and why recent U.S. military moves represent a decisive shift that Friedman refuses to acknowledge.

On Saturday morning Thomas Friedman told Michael Smerconish that Iran’s regime deserved to fall, then added he did not want Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu to get credit because they are “terrible, terrible people doing terrible things to America’s standing in the world.” He spoke this on national television as American forces were executing high-profile operations and tightening pressure on Tehran. His language was measured, but the sentiment was clear: he prefers a different cast of characters to claim victory.

Friedman has been a New York Times columnist since 1995 and has written about the Middle East for decades, so this was not a one-off misstatement. It fits a long record of judgments where he cheered U.S. action in principle but balked at the outcomes when they produced credit for leaders he dislikes. That pattern makes his on-air hesitation into a broader confession about priorities and partisan grudges.

Back in May 2003 Friedman told Charlie Rose that what the Middle East needed was “American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad” and to “suck on this,” calling the Iraq war “unquestionably worth doing.” He repeatedly insisted victory was always just months away, giving rise to the term the Friedman Unit for those rolling six-month forecasts. Reality repeatedly undercut his timeline, and the chief foreign meddler was the regime he now says should fall.

Iran funded Shia militias inside Iraq, supplied bombs engineered to penetrate armor, and was responsible for massive American casualties. The Pentagon tally put Iranian-backed militants’ toll at 603 American troops killed between 2003 and 2011, accounting for a significant share of U.S. deaths in that war. Tehran’s meddling helped turn Iraq into a stalemate that Washington could not resolve for years.

For decades, successive administrations declined to take on the Iranian networks that undermined American efforts in the region. The regime that sabotaged the Iraq campaign was tolerated, and the outcome was strategic failure. Only now has the United States targeted that infrastructure directly, changing the strategic picture in a way Friedman refuses to fully admit.

Recent operations have been decisive on multiple fronts: Khamenei is dead, Iran’s air defenses were neutralized early in the campaign, and the Strait of Hormuz is under tight U.S. naval control. Alternative shipping routes are carrying oil in larger volumes, with pipelines moving millions of barrels a day around Iran. These are tangible shifts, not abstract predictions, and they point to real leverage Washington has seized.

Friedman’s past advocacy for a model that looks to China as an example of efficient governance also undermines his credibility here. He once wrote “Our One-Party Democracy” and suggested China, led by “a reasonably enlightened group of people,” got more out of its system than the United States did. He even mused about being “China for a day” so policies he favored could be imposed without democratic friction.

But that China-centric posture looks less persuasive today. Chinese influence and hardware have faltered across several theatres, Beijing’s diplomatic reach has been strained, and countries in Latin America and Asia are reassessing Chinese military offerings. The practical failures of Chinese and Russian systems in recent conflicts undercut the argument that autocratic models produce superior outcomes.

Friedman’s current critique rests on the claim that Iran’s unpredictability serves as a deterrent and that Trump has no clear endgame. Yet the endgame he denies is unfolding: naval control of Hormuz, pipelines bypassing the strait, China buying American crude to keep Asian markets supplied, and a proxy network fraying into local conflicts Tehran no longer fully controls. These developments are consistent with a dismantling of the regime’s power projection.

This is the same mistake Friedman made with Iraq, repeatedly postponing the moment of judgment when outcomes conflicted with his expectations. Now he rejects the reality because acknowledging it would mean admitting the current leaders earned results he does not want to credit. His objection is less about strategy than about who gets the byline.

Defenders might argue that wartime skepticism is essential and that Cheney-style cheerleading led to the last disaster. That would be persuasive if Friedman had not been the loudest cheerleader for the prior course that failed to reckon with Iranian sabotage. His track record includes misreading the Arab Spring, praising autocratic efficiency, and backing agreements that did not prevent Tehran’s advances.

Iran’s record is long and bloody: it took the U.S. embassy in 1979, bombed the Beirut Marine barracks in 1983, killed hundreds of American troops in Iraq with specially engineered roadside bombs, and plotted assassination attempts on U.S. soil. Destroying a regime that has repeatedly targeted Americans is a legitimately defensive act that reduces future risks. Friedman looked at those facts and publicly preferred to withhold credit because of personal disdain for the men running the operation, which reads as a grudge more than a policy critique.

A columnist who refuses to recognize why eliminating a homicidal, destabilizing regime serves American security has lost the capacity to offer fair criticism of a wartime president. The United States has inflicted a generationally damaging blow on Iran’s capacity to project violence, and while much work remains to secure and shape the aftermath, the change in strategic reality on the ground is real and consequential.