For decades, Washington has talked about the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to the American people. Analysts and politicians have written countless white papers, held congressional hearings and delivered speeches warning that Beijing’s military modernization, economic coercion and technological ambitions pose an existential challenge to America’s military primacy. Yet for all that talk, policymakers have failed to do the one thing that matters most: rebuild our industrial capacity to produce the weapons systems necessary to deter — and if necessary, defeat — Chinese aggression.

That’s finally changing.

Under President Donald Trump‘s leadership, the Department of War is executing the kind of reform that Republicans have promised for a generation but never delivered. Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg aren’t just reorganizing Pentagon charts — they’re forging a genuine partnership between government and industry to rebuild munitions production at a scale approaching Cold War levels, with output of key systems like Tomahawk cruise missiles increasing more than tenfold under new long-term Pentagon contracts. 

This is the strategic imperative of our time. China has spent two decades building the world’s largest navy, modernizing its nuclear arsenal, and stockpiling precision munitions while we debated and delayed. Beijing understands that wars are won by nations that can produce weapons faster than their adversaries can destroy them. We’re in a race to rebuild the arsenal of freedom — and we’ve been losing.

TRUMP OVERHAULS US ARMS SALES TO FAVOR KEY ALLIES, PROTECT AMERICAN WEAPONS PRODUCTION

Inside the Tomahawk cruise missile, and how it might change the tides of the Ukraine war. (U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Carlos M. Vazquez Ii/handout via Reuters)

For years, the defense industry faced conflicting requirements, protracted negotiations and a procurement bureaucracy that made long-term planning nearly impossible. The result was predictable: companies couldn’t justify major capital investments when they had no confidence in future orders.

That’s all changing. The Department of War understands what’s at stake. Recently, they have awarded five landmark contracts that will surge production of Tomahawk cruise missiles, advanced medium range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAMs), and standard missiles, giving industry up to seven years of demand signal. That kind of certainty allows companies to invest billions in new production lines right here in the United States, expand their workforce and strengthen domestic supply chains.

The Department of War is committing to eliminating red tape and providing the long-term contracts necessary for industry to invest at scale. In turn, contractors are responding by committing to faster timelines, additional U.S. investment and reinforced supply chains. The result: tens of billions of dollars in agreements that will flood our arsenal with the precision munitions essential to our current conflict in Iran, but more importantly, to any future Pacific conflict.

This matters because China is watching. Beijing’s strategists know that America’s greatest advantage has always been our industrial might — our ability to outproduce any adversary when the stakes are high enough. But they also know that advantage has atrophied. Our defense industrial base has consolidated, offshored critical components and operated under a just-in-time model incompatible with wartime surge requirements.

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Previous administrations treated defense contractors as vendors in a transactional relationship, squeezing costs while offering little long-term certainty. Industry responded rationally: consolidating, reducing capacity and optimizing for peacetime margins. Meanwhile, China built 248 warships while we built 100, and stockpiled missiles while we debated acquisition reform.

The threats we face demand meaningful action. Venezuela, Ukraine, Iran — each conflict drains our munitions stockpiles and exposes the fragility of global supply chains. But the primary threat remains China. Every Tomahawk missile we don’t produce, every AMRAAM we can’t deliver, every delay in expanding production capacity is a gift to Beijing’s military planners.

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The arsenal of freedom isn’t a metaphor. It’s the factories in Texas building F-35s, the production lines in Arizona surging missile production and the supply chains across America’s heartland that turn raw materials into the weapons systems that preserve peace through strength. Rebuilding that arsenal is how we deter Chinese aggression, reassure our allies and ensure that if conflict comes, America has the industrial might to prevail.

The Trump administration understands this. Now it is executing. And that makes all the difference.

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President Donald Trump didn’t start this war. The Islamic Republic did — on Nov. 4, 1979, when it invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. For nearly half a century, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism has killed and maimed more Americans than any other terrorist regime on Earth. It even plotted twice to assassinate Trump himself.

The regime’s attacks against the United States and our allies are not a series of isolated incidents, but a single, continuous war waged by the mullahs for 47 years. From the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing to the Iranian IEDs that killed 603 Americans in Iraq — roughly one out of every six American combat fatalities — the regime operated on the assumption that Washington lacked the stomach to respond. For years, that bet paid off. Tehran interpreted restraint not as prudence but as permission.

From the October 7 Hamas massacre of roughly 1,200 people, including 46 Americans to 180-plus attacks on U.S. forces last year, the regime has always told us what it wants: death to America.

To confront this looming threat, every American president since Jimmy Carter chose to kick the can down the road, calling it diplomacy. That changed in 2020 when Trump ordered the strike against Qassim Soleimani, the regime’s chief terrorist and IED mastermind. Washington’s foreign-policy class criticized it, but the Iranian people celebrated it.

MICHAEL OREN: IRAN HAS WAGED WAR ON AMERICA FOR 47 YEARS — TIME TO END IT

In this U.S. Navy handout, the USS Thomas Hudner fires a Tomahawk land attack missile in support of Operation Epic Fury on March 1, 2026, at sea. (U.S. Navy/via Getty Images)

When the regime massacred more than 40,000 protesters in January 2026 and attempted to hide the atrocity from the world by shutting down the internet, the people again looked to Trump for help. He answered their call by doing what his predecessors never dared, moving to “end this long-running danger once and for all.”

The case for action was strong. Beyond humanitarian grounds, Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, revealed the details of his and Special Peace Envoy Jared Kushner’s negotiations leading up to the conflict. Their Iranian counterparts proudly admitted they stockpiled enough uranium for 11 nuclear bombs, attainable in weeks. When the U.S. offered to supply Iran’s nuclear fuel for free in exchange for a halt to enrichment, Tehran refused. Witkoff concluded that Iran had no intention of doing anything other than weaponizing its stockpile.

This nuclear threat was built on decades of deception. The regime hid tubes from IAEA inspectors so it could secretly restore the Arak reactor. It concealed an entire nuclear weapons archive from negotiators (subsequently acquired by Israel), then stonewalled international investigators probing undeclared nuclear materials and activities at multiple sites.

THE WAR HITS HOME: WHY FINANCIAL PAIN AND ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY THREATEN TRUMP’S DRIVE TO TOPPLE IRAN’S REGIME

The Obama Administration’s deeply flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) did not constrain the Islamic Republic. Instead, it legitimized and funded Iran’s gradual pursuit of nuclear weapons. Trump accurately called the JCPOA “the worst deal ever negotiated.” He walked away from the agreement in 2018, instituting a maximum pressure campaign, denying the regime more than $200 billion in oil revenue that would otherwise have financed terror operations.

President Joe Biden inexplicably abandoned the strategy, handing Iran the breathing room to accelerate enrichment — until Trump struck the regime’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan last June during Operation Midnight Hammer. When Iran’s negotiators bragged about their bomb-ready stockpile, telling Witkoff, “We’re not going to give you diplomatically what you couldn’t take militarily,” Trump launched Operation Epic Fury.

The operation’s objectives—the embodiment of Trump’s “peace through strength” doctrine — were laid out by the Department of War: destroy Iran’s offensive ballistic missiles and production facilities, annihilate its navy and naval infrastructure, sever terrorist proxy networks, prevent nuclear-weapons development by targeting related sites and degrade the regime’s security apparatus — including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command centers, air defenses, missile and drone launchers and airfields.

LIZ PEEK: IRAN WAR COULD BECOME THE ACHIEVEMENT THAT ENSURES TRUMP’S LEGACY

So far, the results are ahead of schedule. In a joint operation with Israel, Ali Khamenei, the regime’s leader, was killed alongside much of his inner circle and the senior military command — including the heads of the IRGC and Basij, as well as senior power broker Ali Larijani.

More than 80% of Iran’s ballistic missile stockpile and production capacity has been destroyed, along with the bulk of its naval fleet and port infrastructure. Iran’s proxy financing networks — the pipelines that kept Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas armed and operational — have been severed. Nuclear-related sites across the country have been obliterated. At least 49 senior regime officials have been killed or removed from the battlefield.

Their Iranian counterparts proudly admitted they stockpiled enough uranium for 11 nuclear bombs, attainable in weeks. 

This unprecedented degradation of the regime’s repressive forces is leveling the battlefield and creating unprecedented conditions on the streets for the Iranian people to rise up and challenge the mullahs directly.

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The job is not finished. But it is on track. Staying the course will finish it.

President Trump spoke directly to the Iranian people in his address launching the operation: “[T]he hour of your freedom is at hand…When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” That moment is now within reach.

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Smoke and flames rise at the site of airstrikes on an oil depot in Tehran on March 7, 2026. (Sasan / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)

Trump’s strategy is working. His legs are not wobbly and his commitment unshaken: “We don’t want to leave early, do we? … We don’t want to come back every two years.” Half-measures against this regime have a 47-year track record of failure. History will vindicate Trump’s resolve to end it.

As Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the leader of Iran’s democratic opposition, put it: Donald Trump will be remembered as the leader who stood with the Iranian people when it mattered most — alongside history’s greatest liberators.