Everyone knows about “the fog of war.” What about the fog of prewar? There are a lot of similarities. In the fog of war, you can’t trust media reports, in part because the media have been fed disinformation by government sources and in part because much of the media is partisan, incompetent, or both.

The same is true in the fog of prewar. There is lots of disinformation, oodles of partisan reporting, impatient jockeying for position, precedence, and “the scoop.” But the distorting miasma of prewar exhibits something else: irritable impatience. “Why aren’t the authorities doing something? Where are they?”

There is a lot of prewar fog in the reporting about Iran just now. What started as sporadic protests against Iran’s collapsing economy soon evolved into a demand for regime change: the abolition of the Islamic totalitarian government. Many protestors are calling for the recall and restoration of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah of Iran. On January 8, in response to the escalating protests, the evil Shia regime in Tehran shut down the internet nationwide. That was the signal for the mullahs to escalate the repression of the populace into a wholesale slaughter. At first, it was estimated that 2,000 had been killed. That was soon upped to 12,000. A few days ago, many reports increased that number to 20,000: 20,000 people shot or hanged by the IRGC. That figure was later revised upward to 30,000. Today, the number has been increased again to “at least” 50,000, with some citing the number 100,000.

It is largely thanks to Elon Musk, who provided free Starlink access to the internet for those brave enough to deploy a terminal (illegal in Iran), that a visual record of the ensuing massacre has leaked to the West. The images and audio that have emerged from the totalitarian hellhole that is the Islamic Republic of Iran are gruesome. Many show scores upon scores of body bags littering the streets. One shows a line of schoolchildren, aged 8 to 13, handcuffed with bags over their heads. Why? Because they were singing anti-regime songs. There is footage of wounded Iranians being murdered in the hospital by regime thugs who went room to room, killing the protestors “by headshots while intubated, catheterized, and/or attached to cardiac leads.” There are also multiple reports that the regime has used some sort of toxic chemical weapon on the protestors, a flagrant violation of international law if true. The response at home? So far, muted at best. Dinesh D’Souza may well be right that the left is preparing to declare the entire people of Iran “Islamophobic.”

Several days ago, the Iranian regime promised to halt the executions. That was just a ruse. Yesterday, January 17, the Ayatollah Khamenei blamed President Trump for the mayhem, while one of his lieutenants explained that, far from instituting a moratorium on executing protestors, “We will rapidly sentence the ‘terrorists’ and punish them. The speed of punishment is of utmost importance.” To aid in the task, Khamenei has brought in 5,000 Iraqi militia to join Hezbollah fighters to crush the protests. At the same time, Iranian state television openly threatened to assassinate the president of the United States. Flashing the famous image of Trump bleeding and surrounded by Secret Service agents at Butler, PA, their video clip ran the caption: “This time it won’t miss.” This is a threat that will be taken seriously but not kindly. Nor will this comment from Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani: “Trump talks too much,” he said, “don’t take him seriously.” Iranians, he added, are “ready to settle the scores with America and Israel.”

We’ll see about that. I suspect that time is running out for the world’s largest exporter and supporter of terrorism. (Remember: Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis are all Iranian proxies.) As I write, armed opposition groups are massing on Iran’s borders. Many people, including myself, thought that Trump would have moved decisively against the Mullahs by now. “Help is on the way,” he said last week. Some speculate he has thus far stayed his hand in response to an Israeli request for more time to prepare for an expected Iranian response to any attack. Perhaps. There has also been speculation that last week’s saber-rattling was a calculated ploy, a “psy-op,” to expose Iran’s contingency plans for such an attack. We don’t know. The fog of prewar is too thick to say for sure.

One thing that is fog-dispersing, though, is the extraordinary armada that Trump is sending Iran’s way. Six B-2 bombers and assorted other aircraft are already at the Chagos Islands base of Diego Garcia, “the silent launchpad of American power in the Indian Ocean.” Four C-17 Globemasters, full of war materiel, are joining them. Last week, it was reported that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group was steaming from the South China Sea towards the Middle East. Just a day or two back, it was reported that a second aircraft carrier group, led by the USS George H. W. Bush, was en route to the Middle East. That’s more than 150 warplanes and thousands of Marines. At the same time, large amounts of military equipment, including U.S. air defense systems, are being transferred from Europe to the Middle East.

Many commentators, noting Trump’s oft-proclaimed desire for “peace on earth,” believe he has paused to see if negotiations with Iran might end the slaughter. I doubt it. Trump’s desire for peace is perfectly genuine. But I note that the last time he said he wanted “peace on earth” was when he was asked whether he had any New Year’s resolutions just a couple of weeks ago. That was mere hours before he unleashed hell against the Venezuelan tyrant Nicolás Maduro, extracting him and his wife from their heavily fortified compound in Caracas and whisking them to New York in a stunning and perfectly executed special operations raid.

No, that ticking sound you hear is not the world clock. It is the countdown to Iran’s liberation. Let us hope that it encompasses not just the obliteration of that horrible Islamist regime but also the unraveling and supersession of radical Islam itself. As the world has seen repeatedly since 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeni returned to Tehran from Paris, it is a perverted, misogynistic, and death-embracing ideology masquerading as a religion. Did you know, for example, that virgin female prisoners are raped before being executed because  these deranged lunatics believe that women and girls who die as virgins go straight to paradise? Basta! The world cannot be rid of it too soon.