In the history of world politics, there are moments when a president’s legacy is determined not by the number of years he spends in office, but by a single historic decision. President Donald Trump encountered precisely such a moment in his confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was an opportunity to place his name alongside those leaders who played historic roles in defeating Nazism, bringing down communism, and ending apartheid. Yet just as the opportunity emerged to transform military victory into a profound political and security transformation, Trump once again fell into the diplomatic trap of a regime that has made hostility toward America and Israel the foundation of its existence for nearly half a century.
The question now is whether Trump has squandered his historic opportunity or whether he can still recover the time he has lost.
When Ali Khamenei, Iran’s dictator, was decapitated in joint U.S. and Israeli military operations, and several of the criminal leaders of the Shiite mullahs’ Islamic caliphate in Tehran — this system of religious despotism — were consigned to the graveyard of history, the Islamic Republic’s opponents shed no tears for them, nor did they mourn their passing. On the contrary, many Iranians were so astonished and overjoyed by these developments that they came to regard Trump as a historic savior. His portraits were carried by Iranian demonstrators abroad, and his name was invoked in symbolic gestures of gratitude. Even a street was symbolically named after him. For these Iranians, Trump was no longer merely the president of the United States. He had become a symbol of hope for ending a tyranny whose survival had exacted a terrible price from successive generations of Iranians.
THE MEDIA LIED TO YOU, AGAIN. TRUMP DID NOT SAY IRAN SHOULD ‘TAKE OUT’ LOS ANGELES AND SAN DIEGO
But precisely in the midst of the Iranian people’s uprising, when society had risen against the regime and the Islamic Republic was experiencing one of the most difficult periods of its existence, Trump suddenly remembered diplomacy with the savage mullahs. It was as though he had forgotten what kind of regime he was confronting — why nearly half a century of negotiations, agreements, warnings, sanctions, and engagement had failed to change its nature. No American president has succeeded through diplomacy in ending the Islamic Republic’s structural hostility toward the United States and Israel. Why should Trump have imagined that he would become the first to extract genuine and lasting concessions from this criminal cult?
The problem is not merely the intransigence of Tehran’s negotiators. It lies in the ideological nature of the system established by Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeinism — the political doctrine through which Khomeini constructed the Shiite mullahs’ Islamic caliphate — was founded upon hostility toward America, rejection of Israel’s existence, the export of revolution, and the preservation of absolute clerical rule. Within this structure, taqiyya, the concealment of religious belief under particular circumstances, has, in my critical interpretation, become a symbol of the rulers’ political deception and duplicity. This is not an indictment of the religious beliefs of all Shiites. It is an indictment of a specific ruling apparatus that has exploited religious concepts to justify secrecy, repression, and the preservation of power. Negotiating with such a system without understanding its ideological foundations can become a grave national security miscalculation.
History offers Trump a warning: Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Agreement of 1938. Chamberlain believed that by obtaining a piece of paper from Adolf Hitler, he had secured peace. Yet that piece of paper neither changed the nature of Nazism nor prevented the outbreak of World War II. The lesson for Trump is that no commemorative photograph, diplomatic handshake, or baseless agreement with Tehran’s rogue regime of Shiite mullahs can eliminate a threat rooted in the Islamic Republic’s ideology and power structure. An agreement with a regime that sees its own survival in perpetual confrontation, without genuine guarantees, may prove to be nothing more than a diplomatic illusion.
In actuality, Tehran entered this phase of negotiations intending, from the outset, to keep Trump occupied, offer him empty promises, buy time, and ultimately place the political burden of failed negotiations on the American president. The Islamic Republic has come to the negotiating table not to transform its nature, but to preserve its power. Tehran’s officials understand that prolonged negotiations, rising oil prices, anxiety among American voters, and approaching midterm elections can increase political pressure on the White House. They hope that Trump, seeking a symbolic diplomatic victory, will accept an agreement that rescues the Islamic Republic from the brink of collapse.
In pursuit of this objective, the Islamic Republic’s Islamist-left propaganda apparatus, particularly the faction known as the reformists, has spent years attempting to portray Tehran’s ruling establishment as moderate and open to negotiation. This faction, together with media outlets and political circles sympathetic to its narratives, has sought to depict pressure on the Islamic Republic as dangerous and negotiations with its rulers as the only path to peace. At the same time, propaganda attacks against Trump and his maximum-pressure policy have formed part of this political and media confrontation. Yet the reality is that reformists and hardliners, despite their internal differences, have operated within the same system of velayat-e faqih, or guardianship of the Islamic jurist, a system whose central concern is not the manner of negotiation, but the preservation of its power structure.
The question now confronting Trump is what this diplomacy has actually achieved. Has the Islamic regime of Shia thugs abandoned its threats against America? Has its hostility toward Israel ended? Have Tehran’s terrorist and paramilitary proxy networks been dismantled? Have the issues of enriched uranium, the missile program, and threats to maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz been resolved? Or is Washington still hearing the same familiar language of threats, bluffing, lies, blackmail, and unrealistic demands? Diplomacy has meaning when it changes the adversary’s behavior, not when it grants a regime the opportunity to transform military defeat into political victory.
Nor should the role of American-Israeli military and intelligence cooperation be overlooked. The capabilities of the CIA and Mossad, Israel’s intelligence superiority, and America’s military power have been strategically significant in exposing the Islamic Republic’s vulnerabilities. Operations that weaken a regime’s command structure, security networks, and military capabilities are the product of years of intelligence investment, knowledge of the adversary, and national security decision-making. Yet the greatest danger is that the hard-won achievements of such a confrontation may be surrendered at a fruitless negotiating table. Military victory, without a lasting political and security outcome, may become merely a prelude to the next war.
A fundamental distinction deserves particular attention in Washington: Iran is not the Islamic Republic. Iran is the homeland of an ancient nation with a history stretching back thousands of years; the Islamic Republic is an ideological structure that seized political power in 1979. The survival of this regime does not necessarily mean stability for Iran, nor should the end of the regime be confused with the end of the country itself. Millions of Iranians have paid the price of repression, corruption, executions, international isolation, and the regional adventurism of Tehran’s rulers over the past decades. Their destiny must not be sacrificed to an agreement that merely ensures the political survival of those same rulers.
Trump’s historic opportunity lies in his ability, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to help bring an end to the Islamic Republic’s threatening power structure and open the way for political transition in Iran. History has not forgotten those who played decisive roles in defeating Nazism, confronting Stalinism, ending apartheid, and bringing down communist systems. These events were not identical, but they share one lesson: a decisive choice at a defining historical moment can change the course of history. Trump, too, can associate his name with ending one of the Middle East’s longest-running security crises: a crisis perpetuated in significant part by the Islamic Republic’s regional policies, proxy networks, and ideological hostility.
Of course, decisive leadership does not mean endless war, strategic recklessness, or disregard for human suffering. Genuine resolve in national security means having a clear objective, understanding the enemy, employing intelligence and military capabilities within a coherent strategy, and refusing an agreement that permits the threat to be rebuilt. The essential distinction for Trump is that a temporary retreat by the Islamic Republic does not amount to a fundamental transformation of the regime itself. No agreement should give Tehran’s machinery of repression and terrorist networks another opportunity to reorganize and restore their power.
TRUMP’S TIME TO STRIKE AN IRAN DEAL IS RUNNING OUT
Trump can still recover the time he has squandered. But that opportunity will not return through commemorative photographs, diplomatic smiles, or a worthless agreement. The choice before him is whether history will remember him as the president who gave the Islamic Republic a second chance at survival after weakening it, or as the leader who, alongside Israel, helped end the structural threat posed by this regime and opened the way toward a different future for Iran. History will not judge Trump by his intentions or promises, but by the consequences of his decisions. The historic opportunity has not yet been entirely lost, but time waits for no president.
With regime change in Iran and the end of Islamic terrorism, Trump’s name will be forever engraved in the pages of history. I hope he himself recognizes this reality.
Erfan Fard is a counterterrorism analyst and Middle East studies researcher based in Washington, with a particular focus on Iran, Islamic terrorism, and ethnic conflicts in the region.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
