Iran has “talked tough,” notes R.N. Prasher at Asia Times, vowing to bring the United States and Israel to their knees. But its enemies haven’t “suffered casualties and damage anywhere near that suffered by Iran,” and their “leadership remains intact.” Even its hopes to spread the “global energy crisis” seems “unlikely” to save the regime. Notably, President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu don’t appear to be “in a hurry to end hostilities.” Fact is, Iran’s posturing, amid an “economy in shambles, water stress, damage” to its oil infrastructure and “the attrition of its fighting capability,” only makes “regime-survival” less likely. Unless Tehran gravitates toward a “feasible endgame,” we may soon witness the “collapse of its theocracy that the US and Israel seek.”

In response to President Trump’s decision “to bring justice to the Iranian terror-sponsoring regime,” Tucker Carlson “and others in right-wing circles” wrongly “claim that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States” and cast blame on Israel, sighs Frank Miele at RealClear Politics. This crowd ignores the fact “that an unrestrained Iran is not just an imminent threat; it is an existential threat.” Call them “Obama Republicans,” as they’re aligned with “a president who tried to avoid war with Iran by sending [the regime] a planeload of cash.” Insisting that Iran’s past transgressions don’t constitute “an ‘imminent’ danger is to redefine the word into meaninglessness.”

The “Russiagate” investigation was Robert “Mueller’s final public act, and he was not up to the job,” observes Eli Lake at The Free Press: It was a scandal he “could have exposed, but ended up fueling”: For years, the “resistance” fed off rumors about a probe that in the end “turned up nothing.” Worse, the “investigation could have been closed: years earlier, as line FBI agents recommended; key allegations “heavily relied on unverified ‘research’” from the Clinton campaign. Mueller “was in a position to expose a political dirty trick played against a sitting president. Instead, he kept his mouth shut for more than two years and allowed the dark clouds of innuendo and rumor to gather.” This silence “discredited the FBI and the Justice Department” in the eyes of half the country, and is “a big part of Mueller’s legacy.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s deals with China — a country he’d “called, only one year ago, Canada’s ‘biggest security threat’ ” — aim “to accomplish a magical transformation from frog to prince, from interfering foreign power to ‘strategic partner’ in the ‘new world order,’ ” despite concerns that this rapprochement “puts Canada in a position of vulnerability,” frets Jane Stannus at The Spectator-US. One accord (its text still secret) is on law-enforcement cooperation with Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security, which “has for years sought to control and intimidate members of the Chinese diaspora in Canada.” Trade deals may let China “use Canada as a dumping ground for its excess production, which could spell the end of Canada’s manufacturing sector.” Beware: A Canada “negotiating with a communist one-party authoritarian state from a position of moral weakness, without enforceable safeguards, may find itself in the soup.”

“Breaking China’s hold on the rare-earth supply chain” only requires the US government to “get out of the way,” explains Reason’s Eric Boehm. Right now, China mines 60 percent of the global supply of rare earths” (“the collective name for 17 different heavy metals essential to many aspects of modern computing technology”), but “the United States dominated until the 1980s.” Why? “A single mine requires approval from multiple federal and state agencies with overlapping and duplicative regulatory requirements,” adding “more than $1 billion to the development of major mining projects.” So “much of America’s abundant supply of rare earths — which are actually not all that rare, despite the name — remains untapped.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board