One of the worst and most debilitating foreign policy doctrines of the early 21st century was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s so-called Pottery Barn rule on the use of U.S. military force: “If you break it, you own it.”

It turns out, that’s not true. You can just break it.

In Iran, President Donald Trump buried Powell’s rule deep in the rubble of the Fordow nuclear enrichment plant. Trump set a clear but limited goal: to end Iran’s nuclear program. He then offered the Iranian regime a peaceful path to do so. When Iran chose not to accept his offer, he launched Operation Midnight Hammer, deploying a squadron of B-2 Spirit bombers to “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear sites. Then he warned Tehran that if it retaliated, he would eliminate its leader and remove its regime from power.

“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’” Trump declared on Truth Social soon after the attack, “but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” (He earlier warned that he knew “exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding.”)

Iran understood Trump was not bluffing. The president, who in his first term killed Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and had just bombed Iran’s secretive nuclear program, would not have hesitated to subject Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to — in Trump’s words — “A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH.” So, Iran backed down. The regime launched a carefully telegraphed symbolic strike against the United States’ al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar and then accepted Trump’s offer of a ceasefire.

When Trump held out the prospect of regime change, no one thought he was planning to send 160,000 U.S. troops to march on Tehran and establish a Coalition Provisional Authority to govern and rebuild the country. He was talking about a decapitation strike. In a 2016 interview with PBS’s “Frontline,” Powell recalled his warning to President George W. Bush before the Iraq War began: “If you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are.”

Trump wisely rejected that logic. He could change the regime in Tehran with an airstrike and leave what came next to the people of Iran and the region.

And if a new Iranian government decided to resume the atomic pursuit, he could strike that regime as well.

This is why the debate in Washington over the effectiveness of Operation Midnight Hammer is so ridiculous. What the damage assessments don’t take into account is that, if Iran shows any sign of trying to reconstitute its nuclear program, Trump could strike again … and again … and again. The same B-2 bombers he launched at Fordow once can easily make the 37-hour round trip from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri a second or third time. Indeed, if the Iranian regime started tunneling in Fordow, Israel could strike before additional U.S. bunker-busters were even necessary.

Iran would be powerless to stop such strikes. It has lost its terrorist proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. It has lost its regional ally, Syria, whose new government is reportedly considering a peace accord with Israel. It has lost most of its air defenses, ballistic missile launchers, and cadres of nuclear scientists and military leaders — all vaporized. Iran is strategically naked, weaker than it has ever been since the 1979 revolution.

Moreover, the psychological taboo over striking Iran has been broken. The Israelis were told that Iranian leaders would launch up to 1,000 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to an attack on their nuclear program, which would have overwhelmed Israel’s missile defenses and caused untold civilian casualties. But over 12 days of attacks, Iran never managed to launch more than 40 ballistic missiles in a single barrage, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Add to that its feckless response to the U.S. bombing, and there is no reason, if Iran misbehaves, U.S. or Israeli strikes cannot be repeated.

Already, Trump is warning he might do so. On Friday, he said he would “absolutely” and “without question” be willing to bomb Iran again if it resumed enriching uranium, but he added, “I don’t believe that they’re going to go back into nuclear anytime soon.”

For decades, the Powell rule needlessly constrained the U.S. from addressing threats from Iran and other countries. Now, from Tehran to Pyongyang to Beijing, the world’s tyrants know that the rule lies buried “under millions of tons of rock” and will constrain the U.S. no longer.

Marc Thiessen is a columnist with the Washington Post.