The Iranian regime is broken, so we should finish the job.
Why are we negotiating with anyone who mistakes the Trump Administration for the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama?
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
This is a guest essay by Thane Rosenbaum, an essayist and author of the book, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Donald Trump has always been a man of gluttonous taste.
After surviving a litany of federal and state prosecutions and a slew of civil actions in his four-year hiatus from the White House, he proved to be a glutton for punishment, too.
And yet, he always presented himself as a man not to be trifled with.
So why on Earth is he still allowing a mummified Ayatollah, a dwindling cadre of mullahs, and remnants of the psychopathic Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to make him look like a chump?
Yes, I know that the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding is reportedly imminent — if it hasn’t already, ceremoniously, taken place. I am confident that no matter the terms, it will not derail Iran’s nuclear ambitions. And the Strait of Hormuz will remain a confiscatory gas station.
As long as President Trump continues to negotiate with Islamic clerics and not true statesmen, his “art of the deal” standing will result in nothing but dashed hopes and bad faith.
This is not the first time an end to hostilities with this regime has been promised. Each one, including the laughable “Iran Deal” from 2015, was heralded as a breakthrough in diplomacy until the discovery that the regime plays fast and loose with both uranium and truth.
Theocrats know but one word: “submission” to the one true God. Breaching contracts with infidels is child’s play. The Koran is quite clear that devout Muslims are permitted to do almost anything they wish to infidels — most especially, lie.
There is no equivalent in the Koran to Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Turning cheeks is not an approved Islamic calisthenic.
The United States and Israel have been at war with Iran since the beginning of this year. It hasn’t been much of a contest. Fifty years of Iran’s trash-talking and death threats were revealed to be empty. The country’s most promiscuous dirty work was always performed by its proxies — Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
They, too, quickly succumbed to the superior air power of the United States and Israel.
Iran was rendered without a navy and air force. Their air-defense systems were decimated. Stockpiles of missiles and weapons-making facilities smoldered in ruins. All that survived were some pesky drones and a smattering of ballistic missiles — along with enough fissile material for a few nuclear warheads.
Of course, serviceable launching pads remain in short supply.
Given the paucity of its fighting capacity, how is this regime still in power? Why haven’t the Iranian people seized the moment and reclaimed their country? No one even knows who is in charge. A decapitated leadership and devastated economy should be ripe for takeover.
What’s left are punch-drunk braggards claiming victory while cowering underneath their Persian carpets. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on state television that whatever agreement gets signed will leave Iran in a stronger position than when the conflict began. “Iran is the winner of the war with the U.S.,” he reassured the nation.
Why is he still alive? And why are we negotiating with anyone who mistakes the Trump Administration for the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama? The whole point of waging war against Iran was to free the nation of Islamists. Only without Islamists can there ever be a non-nuclear Iran that isn’t in the business of bankrolling terrorist proxies.
Yes, Trump didn’t speak the words openly because he feared the backlash from Islamists within a Democratic Party dressed in the clothing of “progressives.” But the combined forces of the United States and Israel killed Iran’s Supreme Leader and maybe also his son; the entirety of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ senior leadership; Iran’s intelligence, security, military and defense establishment; and its political leadership, including its acting president, for one reason: “regime change.”
Without regime change, Islamic theocrats would still harbor thoughts of a caliphate. Spreading political Islam would haunt the globe.
Signing an agreement with the remnants of this crumbling regime is tantamount to no agreement at all. This cast of sorry diplomats is duplicity incarnate.
Islamists are not rational state actors. They are not motivated by delicate diplomatic gestures. They have no regard for treaties. They don’t wish to be recognized as statesmen. Negotiating with their enemies, in fact, is a betrayal of Allah.
Muhammad was first and foremost a wartime general. Serving as a prophet was merely a side hustle. Imagine if Jews and Christians believed that about Moses and Jesus.
The only way to restore Iran to the family of nations — to force it to dispense with barbaric practices like beheadings, dismemberments and the hanging of homosexuals from cranes — is to strip Shi’ite clerics of their power, which can only be accomplished by changing this regime forever, and for the better.
Donald Trump has so far been waging a half-war against Iran. The very fact that he’s negotiating with Islamists means that he’s in business with the wrong people. Surely, he realizes that the ceasefire in Gaza has fallen very far short of its intended goal. Hamas is still hanging around, fully armed and recruiting a new generation of terrorists. Is that what he envisions for Iran?
Yes, the president has political problems at home that have given him pause to finish the job. After the first 60 days of fighting without a War Powers Resolution, President Trump didn’t want to risk essentially a no-confidence vote from Congress. Many elected officials, including some Republicans, are not enamored of this war.
Oil prices are spiking while the Strait of Hormuz is shut down by crooked clerics. U.S. midterm elections are slated for this fall and the president fears that an unpopular war will cause Republicans to lose congressional seats and governorships.
Perhaps most important of all, Trump is trying to avoid American casualties. He has managed to decapitate Iran’s leadership and capsize its fighting force without any significant loss of American lives.
These hesitations have led to halting, halfhearted negotiations rather than setting unconditional terms of surrender.
Iran knows all about our upcoming elections, havoc over gas prices, and our aversion to dead American soldiers. That’s precisely why they are stalling.
Like Hamas, the Islamists that govern Iran welcome death. They will never stop spinning centrifuges for anything less than weapons-grade enriched uranium. Lifting international sanctions, releasing their frozen assets, and granting them exclusive control over the Strait of Hormuz are absolutes. They are content waiting for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rise to the U.S. presidency to receive them.
We are going about this all wrong. This could be a defining moment to demonstrate that the United States is willing to do all that is necessary to defeat Islamists — in the only non-equivocating language they will understand.
Like with most things about his presidency, especially when it came to his abysmal foreign policy, Barack Obama set America on the wrong course. No president should ever run away from the mantle of American exceptionalism. It’s who we are. Never should we apologize for it.
Obligations come with being the world’s most powerful liberal democracy. Perhaps most important is the realization that Islamists are not our friends. It takes exceptionalism to stand in opposition to such regimes, and the courage to change them.
A version of this essay also appeared in the Jewish Journal.
I’m a big Trump supporter but now I classify him like you said with Obama and Carter. It’s the 25th mile of the marathon and he’s quitting all because of political reasons. Shame on him I’ve lost all respect for him unless there’s something I don’t know about. I agree 100% ..if there is no regime change all of this has been for nothing.
The good news is Mamdani is ineligible for the presidency.