Only a few weeks ago, it appeared that the fate of the regime in Tehran was sealed. A sweeping popular protest by masses of Iranians flooded the streets, and it seemed poised to topple the Iranian regime, despite its attempts to drown the demonstrators in rivers of blood.
All that was required was a decisive blow to the head of the regime, either by eliminating its leaders or by striking at its centers of power, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But that blow, which only the Americans could have delivered, never came.
History will judge whether there truly was a real chance to overthrow the Iranian regime and whether the US president missed a golden opportunity that may not return in the foreseeable future. But all of that is now water under the bridge. The protests in Iran have, for the time being, subsided. The regime is recovering. And the Americans are seeking to open negotiations and reach an agreement whose meaning is one and the same: extending a lifeline to the ayatollahs in Tehran, allowing them to survive in power and continue on their path.
Trump continues to issue threats and to dispatch more and more military forces to the Persian Gulf. He hopes that this will be enough to convince the Iranians to reach an agreement with him, one he can add to the list, some would say respectable and others would argue dubious, of agreements he has signed over the past year.
Trump has simply forgotten that Iran is not Venezuela. Nor is it Israel, or the Hamas terrorist organization, on all of which he imposed agreements.
In fact, to this day Trump has not really conducted negotiations with anyone. He has merely dictated his will to countries and leaders who depend on him and therefore seek to satisfy him. The only negotiation he has conducted was with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, and that, as we know, is going nowhere.
If there is one thing the Iranians excel at, it is negotiation: dragging out talks, buying time, deceiving their adversary, exhausting him, and ultimately securing an agreement that serves their own interests.
Above all, what truly matters to the ayatollahs is the survival of the regime. Everything else is negotiable, because experience has shown that whatever the Iranians give up today, they can reclaim tomorrow.
In 1988, after eight bloody years of war with Iraq, Iran's leader, Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, stunned his people by announcing his readiness to accept a ceasefire, despite having previously called for an all-out war until total victory over Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Khomeini explained that for him this was like drinking a cup of poison, but that he had no choice, since Saddam Hussein had begun using chemical weapons in the war and had rained thousands of missiles on Iran's cities.
Since then, Iran's leaders have drunk several more cups of poison. In 2003, they temporarily halted their nuclear project after the Americans invaded Iraq and it appeared they might continue on to Tehran. And again a decade later, when they reached an agreement with President Barack Obama that also froze their progress toward nuclear weapons.
The Iranians thus demonstrated pragmatism in order to ensure the regime's survival. In retrospect, however, all of the concessions they made turned out to be deceptive. They never truly abandoned their nuclear project; they merely froze it, only to renew it as soon as circumstances allowed. As for support for terrorism in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon, and the development of missile weapons, those were never even on the table.
From Iran's perspective, what was will be again this time as well. Therefore, one should not negotiate with the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime must be overthrown.
If Trump wants to "play the game," then instead of negotiations he should present the Iranians with an ultimatum, accept his terms, and ensure that this time there are no discounts or compromises, only total capitulation: the dismantling of Iran's nuclear program, the dismantling of its missile project, and the dismantling of the terrorist proxies Iran has established in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq.
Otherwise, nothing has been achieved.
