Trump shouldn’t fall into the Iran negotiations trap
Tehran’s Islamist despots can’t be trusted to abide by
agreements. Throwing them a lifeline, which they will use to go on
spreading death and terror, would be a major blunder.
JNS
Feb2, 2026
President Donald Trump was re-elected to
the presidency to drain the swamp in Washington, push back the tide of
illegal immigration and roll back the dead hand of toxic woke leftism in
American government and society. He wasn’t returned to the White House
to enact regime change in Iran or anywhere else. Those two basic truths
are the foundation of any argument on behalf of the United States not
getting actively involved in the effort to topple the Islamists
theocrats in Tehran.
Still, there’s another angle from which to consider that question.
Whatever else was on his agenda or that of
his voters, it is equally true that the second Trump administration was
not summoned into existence to re-enact the failed foreign policy of
former President Barack Obama. And that’s the main thing for the
president and his team to remember as they engage in negotiations this
week with Iran.
The Islamist regime is sending senior
officials to Turkey, where they plan to meet with the president’s
special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, as well as his
son-in-law and informal adviser, Jared Kushner. The United States says
that a whole range of issues, including Iran’s nuclear program, missiles
and terrorism, is on the table. The Iranians say they want only to
discuss the nuclear issue.
Obama’s Iran folly
But that is a formula for Iran to do what
it has always done with Western, and especially American, envoys who are
desperate for a deal with the mullahs: prevaricate and string the
diplomats along until they give up or give in to Tehran’s demands.
That’s what happened to Obama’s Secretary
of State John Kerry, who arrived at talks with Iran in 2013 with a
strong hand backed by global sanctions that had shaken a regime that was
tottering due to domestic unrest. Over the course of the next two
years, Kerry abandoned Obama’s demands and campaign promises to end
Iran’s nuclear program and to end its role as the world’s leading state
sponsor of terror. The result was the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that
actually guaranteed that the country would eventually get a nuclear
weapon, rather than preventing it from building or acquiring one.
It rescued the Islamist theocrats from the
predicament that they had created at home and flooded it with billions
in cash used to suppress dissent at home and spread terror around the
Middle East.
That’s exactly what Iranian Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is hoping will happen again in talks with
Trump’s team. It comes at a time when his government has been shaken by
massive protests in the past few weeks, which have been suppressed by
the murder of as many as 30,000 protesters. Khamenei knows he needs a
lifeline. He knows that a repeat of last summer’s joint Israeli-American
air campaign aimed at weakening the regime’s ability to project terror
abroad might be the spark that finally blows up the Islamist government.
A deal right now with Washington will ensure that it survives and lives
to fight the “great Satan”—ironically, the United States, the same
entity that may give it a lifeline—and Israel, the “little Satan.
That would be bad enough. But the
spectacle of repeating the pattern of Obama’s appeasement of Iran by
repudiating his promises to the Iranian people that “help is on the way”
would be a disaster for Trump’s foreign policy and embolden foes around
the globe.
A ‘red line’ precedent
It would also seem to be a repeat of
another Obama fiasco. Obama backed off on his 2012 threat to Syrian
President Bashar Assad, saying if the despot were to use chemical
weapons against his own people, then it would cross a “red line” and
ensure a U.S. military response. Nothing came of that; it was another
milepost on the road to American decline. By punting on the threat and
offshoring the job of dealing with the problem to Russia, Obama threw
away American credibility, handing Tehran and its allies a huge and
undeserved victory for its plans for regional hegemony.
For the same thing to happen to Trump
would be an even greater disaster since his foreign-policy successes
have been based on the fact that foreign adversaries and allies have
been reluctant to test his mettle in a confrontation. If, under pressure
from critics on the far right and far left who oppose a strong stance
against Iran, Trump wilts, then no one will or should take his threats
seriously again.
It’s entirely true that Trump and the
American people would prefer to avoid using military force against Iran,
as well as have zero interest in fighting a land war there or engaging
in “nation-building.” Washington won’t repeat President George W. Bush’s
mistaken policies that landed America and its troops in an Iraqi
quagmire. But neither can Trump afford to demonstrate weakness just at
the moment when he needs to project strength if he is to deal with this
and other ongoing difficulties, like ending the war in Ukraine.
Witkoff and Kushner’s hubris
The dilemma here is partly the trap that
talking with an insincere negotiating partner always provides. Trump,
Witkoff and Kushner all believe themselves to be master negotiators
because of their past work in real estate, coupled with the
administration’s successes during the president’s first term, such as
brokering the Abraham Accords between Israel and four Muslim-majority
countries.
Yet they have already signaled that, like
Kerry, they are far too eager for a deal with a regime that is at its
best and most lethal when it is pretending to be reaching an agreement
with the United States.
The problem, however, transcends the
hubris that Witkoff and Kushner will pack in the bags they take to
Istanbul. It is also about how to define the Trump approach to foreign
policy.
“America First” means viewing the world
through a realist prism rather than one determined by fantasies about a
rapprochement with people whose main goal is to destroy the West. It
also means overturning the conventional wisdom of the D.C. establishment
about the value of appeasing the Islamist terror regime and ensuring
that it is not allowed to use its oil wealth, nuclear program or its
terrorist forces to destabilize the Mideast. And it means helping those
who are aiding American foreign-policy goals without necessarily doing
all the fighting for them.
Far from an isolationist creed, Trump’s
vision is one that is essentially about projecting and embodying
American strength abroad. That’s in direct contrast with the sort of
weakness that led to the outbreak of wars in the Middle East and Ukraine
in the four years Biden was warming Trump’s seat in the Oval Office.
That’s why Trump joined Israel’s attack on
Iran’s nuclear program last June and inflicted the sort of damage that
makes it unlikely that they will be able to use it to achieve their
dream of regional hegemony.
And it’s also why Trump ought not to fall
into the trap of negotiations with Iran just at the moment when a
decisive push against them, both via sanctions and strategic strikes,
might enable the Iranian people to overthrow the regime that has
murdered and oppressed them for the last 47 years.
It’s not just that everyone knows that no
deal with Iran could be verified by independent monitors of either its
media or that the regime could be trusted to keep. They’ve cheated on
the nuclear pact they made with Obama and virtually every other deal the
regime has signed since the Islamist movement toppled the Shah of Iran
in 1979.
Making Trump a lame duck
So, if Trump backs down on anything less
than a change in the fundamental character of the Iranian regime and its
transformation into a reasonable neighbor rather than the home base for
terrorism, the damage he’ll be doing to himself will be as great as it
is to the Iranian people’s hopes for a governmental alternative.
Few presidents have more at stake in
maintaining their reputations than those who can’t be trifled with or
bested in a negotiation. Surrendering to Iran will inevitably lead to
surrendering to Hamas in Gaza. It would also end any hope of concluding
Russia’s war with Ukraine on terms the West can live with or deterring
global power grabs by an empowered China. It would also impair his
ability to act for the rest of his term in office, which is still three
full years.
We can’t know what the ultimate outcome of
a U.S. or a joint U.S.-Israel attack on Iran looks like or what all the
consequences of such a policy would be. But we do know that failing to
follow through on his threats would make Trump a lame duck on foreign
policy and pin on him the responsibility for future massacres of
Iranians by their Islamist tyrants. That’s a price the president simply
cannot afford.
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