The Iranian regime, by violating US President Donald J. Trump's ceasefire after only four hours, did the world a great favor. It should now be clear, if it was not, before, that Iran's government -- called by the US Department of State, the "world's leading state sponsor of terrorism for the 39th year running," -- does not look as if it will suddenly agree to become the compete opposite of itself.
As big-hearted as it is for Trump -- who deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing an end to the war with Iran in just 12 days, and the US operation in just 37 hours -- to agree to talks with Iran's ruling mullahs, in Shiite Islam, unfortunately, whenever Islam might appear under threat, dissimulation, taqiyya, is recommended.
The Iranian regime would doubtless be delighted to negotiate forever. It is a perfect way to run out the clock, especially by claiming at each near-breaking point to be "this close" to a solution. The regime has skillfully been orchestrating this kind of "diplomacy" for 46 years.
If Trump thinks that Iran's mullahs will actually comply with any agreement they make -- such as to stop trying to obtain nuclear weapons; to stop their policy of "Death to Israel" and "Death to America;" or stop arming terrorist proxies in neighboring countries; or stop having their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) brutalize their own citizens, or actually permitting "anywhere-anytime" nuclear inspections by Israel and the US – he could be in for a shock.
Trump, in fact, appears to know as much. He has already said that "a nuclear deal would not be necessary" -- meaning, it seems, that he realizes he will not get one. Any "handshake" agreement, of course, would most certainly be reversed at the end of his term, if not sooner, and only serve as a green light for the mullahs to wait him out, get rich and rearmed, and then, as soon as the coast is clear, get back to doing what they really want: "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."
As the Iranian author Amir Taheri (and, full disclosure: chairman of Gatestone Europe) notes today:
"This time it was, again, the United States to remove the cup of victory from their lips.
"The do-gooders who imposed the fishtail outcome forgot that the duty of a war is to change an unstable status quo and replace it by a new one acceptable to protagonists, by clearly designating a victor and a vanquished....
"The do-gooders and peddlers of ceasefire turn war into a knife that remains in the wound, to be turned again and again.
"In other words, in some cases, ceasefire could be an enemy of peace."
Iran's regime has not only been committed for nearly half a century to "Death to Israel" and – as "a policy," according to Iran's Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei -- to "Death to America." To implement this policy, the regime has also been committed to acquiring nuclear weapons and the intercontinental ballistic missiles to fire them across the Atlantic. Who do you suppose is there?
Iran already has ballistic missiles that carry a one-ton warhead, which have devastated entire city blocks. It is currently on the way to producing missiles tipped with a two-ton warhead, which might efficiently destroy even larger areas. In addition, Iran's regime has been suppressing, poisoning, arresting, raping, torturing and executing its own citizens in record numbers. In 2025 alone, Iran's regime has already executed 1,700 people -- and it is not even July.
"Those who are prepared to treat their own people badly," wrote the Russian dissident Natan Sharansky in A Case for Democracy, co-authored with Ron Dermer, now Israel's Minister for Strategic Affairs, "are likely to treat others even worse."
The question regarding Iran, then, is what to do with it?
The good news is that the Iranian regime is not the same as the Iranian people. In 2009, 2011 and 2012, the Iranian people came out onto the streets begging then US President Barack Obama to help them overturn their brutal regime. Instead, Obama ignored them and effectively underwrote the mullahs' war machine (here, here and here).
Last week, there were hopes that the regime's dissidents might finally take over. On June 23, in a precision airstrike, Israel blew the entrance gate off Tehran's horrific Evin Prison, where most political prisoners are held, presumably to encourage dissidents to take to the streets again to spark a change, the same way the former trade union leader Lech Walesa did to free Poland from the Soviet Union in 1989.
Regrettably, as in Venezuela, civilians in Iran are forbidden to have guns – clearly to keep them defenseless -- the reason for the United States' Second Amendment.
"Iran," The Telegraph reported last week, is "'hiding thousands of centrifuges' to build nuclear bomb," adding: "The IRGC is growing in power, influence and control, according to one well placed Iranian source."
The Economist backed that up with a report headlined, "Fierce hardliners are grabbing power in Iran."
In recent days, Iranian authorities have reportedly arrested more than 700 people accused of ties with Israel – with who knows what kind of unimaginable "trial." Three of those have already been sentenced to death for "espionage." This is the regime that Trump will leave in place?
Secular thugs might be preferable to religious thugs, but still seem less than an ideal solution. The West brilliantly defeated Lenin and Stalin, only to come up with -- Vladimir Putin, a KGB graduate and mass-murderer?
Sadly, the idea of "nation-building" has become only slightly less popular than a diagnosis of cancer, yet if one looks at the thumping successes of Germany and Japan after World War II, what is clear is that nation-building can work – just not if it is done atrociously, which is true of anything. Just because all surgeries do not necessarily end well, does not mean that one should never undergo surgery. One just wants to make sure that any plan is as carefully thought-through beforehand as Trump's assault on Iran's nuclear installations was, and that it would be administered by no-nonsense people who are, for a change, genuinely competent.
In their book, Sharansky and Dermer stated that many countries can be categorized as "countries of freedom" or "countries of fear." The biggest mistake that the West made, the authors suggested, was to assume that elections are the same thing as democracy. They are not. Elections, Sharansky and Dermer insisted, must come after other institutions of democracy are solidly in place and running smoothly, not before then. These institutions include property rights; equal justice under the law; separation of religion and state; freedom of religion and from religion; a free judiciary separate from the government; freedom of the press, and -- above all -- freedom of speech. A country is free, the book maintains, only when a citizen can stand in the town square and criticize the government without fear of retribution.
At present, since operatives were able to quietly work inside Iran to bring down its two-trillion-dollar nuclear weapons program, why could operatives not also quietly work to guide the Iranian people who wish to have a free government toward a new free, peaceful and prosperous way of life?
It is a transition that admittedly cannot be done in a week – it took four years before the Germans could elect Chancellor Konrad Adenauer – but that transition was not necessarily going to happen all by itself. It was cautiously nursed into place.
The West seems to have condemned itself to look only for quick fixes, possibly so politicians can get the quick-fix credit they need to run for reelection. So many problems are unaddressed, for instance the crisis in mental health, because politicians cannot see a quick credit in fixing it.
What seems to be missing to "Make Iran Great Again: MIGA!" -- as with the failure of every previous US administration to confront Iran's nuclear threat, as Trump so brilliantly did last week -- is the political will.
Perhaps, in order not to create more North Koreas, Russias or failed states, a bit of help in Iran would go a long way to making not just Iran "Great Again," but the complete Middle East.
Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
