I saw my Iranian refugee friend Kaveh in church this morning and asked him what he thought of the killing of Qasem Soleimani.

“I’m a little unhappy with it,” he said. “My wife’s unhappy, too. So are our parents in Teheran.”

“Why””

“Because he didn’t suffer.”

“You’re a Christian, right?”

“Right.”

“Trust me, brother, he’s suffering,” I said.

I’m an ex-pat living next door to the Middle East, and I don’t think most Americans understand what a significant historic event this is. Most Iranians are completely fed up with the oppressive reign of the mullahs, and most Middle East countries are completely fed up with the organized terrorism being exported by Iran, which has been destabilizing the region for the last four decades.

It all began when a rather gullible peanut rancher from Plains, Georgia, who occupied the White House for a mostly unfortunate four years, allowed the foxy old cleric to convince him that a Khomeini-led Iran would be friendly to the United States. Not long after that the U.S. embassy fell to an organized Iranian mob. To be fair, Khomeini wasn’t behind the embassy seizure, but he quickly understood that he held a huge bargaining chip in the face of the Carter-led USA’s lack of resolve.

Mark Steyn, substituting for Rush Limbaugh last Friday, said that Soleimani arrived at Bagdhad Airport, collected his luggage, and then about five minutes later collected his seventy-two virgins. “The reason he got seventy two virgins,” Steyn quipped, “was because he was blown into seventy-two pieces.”

Victor David Hanson accurately observes in the National Review that “Iran deeply erred in thinking that Trump’s restraint was permanent, that his impeachment meant he had lost political viability, that he would go dormant in an election year, that the stature of his left-wing opponents would surge in such tensions, and that his base would abandon him if he dared to use military force.”

Why, pray tell, did Iran miscalculate so badly? Could it be that the mullahs were reading the same leftist propaganda the mainstream media has been spewing about Trump for years now, and, observing the recent vote for impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives, grossly underestimating both Trump’s strength, and his huge popularity among the vast swathe of the United states sandwiched between the left and right coasts who pound nails, install tile, ride both farm and long-haul tractors, style hair, clean bedpans in hospitals, and wait tables?

As you know, the Left, which owns and controls popular culture, academe, and the arts, has been working hand in glove with the mainstream media to spread disinformation about Trump, his supporters, and his agenda. Most normal, sane, balanced people see, given the natural corruption every president is heir to, a pretty clean guy who is being excoriated on what are essentially style points, like the nouveau riche Al Czervic, played by Rodney Dangerfield, stinking up the clubhouse in his fire red polyester slacks, Kelly green shirt, and rainbow-colored cardigan.

For those of us who are reasonably sane and normal, Trump’s just fine. He loves the country, he looks out for her best interests, and he loves the working man. He’s hired enough of them over the years. And what he’s just done, given Iran’s escalating provocations towards the U.S. in recent years, including the humiliating seizure of a naval vessel complete with pictures of cringing, weeping American sailors,  shows a remarkable level of prudence and patience.

The Iranians crossed two red lines, almost simultaneously: they killed an American contractor and wounded several U.S. military personnel in a rocket attack on a military base in northern Iraq on December 27th.

Now the Left is predictably quaking at the thought of Iranian retaliation. It won’t happen -- not in a really damaging way. The Iranians might not even take credit. Think of it this way: what if Iran killed VP Mike Pence with a Hellfire missile fired from a helicopter a couple miles away from Pence’s motorcade? Trust me: the small circle of men running that country are in shock, and suddenly feel very, very vulnerable.

My friend Kaveh talks to his father in Teheran practically every day -- or at least those days when Iran doesn’t suspend the internet. People in Iran are suffering. But they fully understand what is happening is progressively weakening the regime, and Persians are a patient people with a long, long history to look back on.

General David Petraeus, the former commander of the Multinational Force-Iraq, among other positions of high leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan, said recently on “Face The Nation,” “…this is bigger than bin Laden. It's bigger than Baghdadi.” He should know.

The mainstream media is ignoring the ongoing protests that have been rocking Iran for the last two years. Soleimani was responsible for many of the over five-hundred protestors killed during that time. The end is, however faintly, in sight for this odious, cruel, insane regime.

Perhaps a few years from now we will look back on this event and say, as Churchill did in 1942, “This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”