The Iranian regime tried and failed to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump. It seems the third time is not the charm. The incoming administration will get its chance to avenge the attempt on Trump’s life, and simultaneously accelerate a grand realignment in the Middle East.

In the last 45 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has brought terror and instability to that region, not to mention to its own citizens. Its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Kataib Hezbollah, among others — serve to export the regime’s radical perversion of Shia Islam and establish regional hegemony. Tehran retains plausible deniability.

In the 1980s, the newly formed Islamic Republic established strong ties with Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, father of the current butcher of Damascus, Bashar Al-Assad. Hezbollah, an extremist Shi’ite group, established a shadow state in Lebanon. The only obstacle to Iran’s contiguous path to the Mediterranean was Iraq.

With Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003 and his Baathist regime gutted, Iran backed the Shi’ite terrorist groups vying to fill the power vacuum. Iran connected its proxy network, thus establishing a corridor across the Levant known as the “Shia Crescent.” In 2014, the Houthis took over Yemen, extending Iran’s influence to the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

© The Hill