What to talk about with Iran.
Never mind that Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden summons to the White House failed to undo, or even just dent, Donald Trump’s 17% tariff on Israeli goods. Never mind the visit’s failure to deliver any gospel on the hostages, Gaza, or Turkey’s takeover of Syria.
Just think of what Trump did there to Bibi’s careerlong obsession: Iran. Seated regally alongside a dumbfounded Netanyahu while facing a phalanx of journalists, Trump said he will open direct talks with the ayatollahs of Tehran.Throughout the Obama and Biden presidencies, Netanyahu’s subtext has been that the Democrats’ Iranian policy was both naïve and reckless. That’s why in his famous speech to Congress in 2015, Netanyahu lectured to Barack Obama:
“I am standing here in Washington DC, and the difference is so stark: America’s founding document promises life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; Iran’s founding document pledges death, tyranny and the pursuit of jihad.”
That is also why Netanyahu applauded Trump’s order to assassinate Iranian general Kassam Suleimani – and claimed to have played a role in that operation.
That was the old Trump: the Republican messiah who shared Netanyahu’s views and loathed what he and Bibi saw as Obama’s myopia and cowardice. Now there is a new Trump – a Republican Obama – which raises the perplexing question: What happened to Bibi’s magic?
What can be expected?
If Netanyahu only learned of Trump’s decision when we did, why did he not know what his “close friend” was about to do to him? And if he did know, why did he fail to prevent Trump’s reckless U-turn? Then again, the Bibi factor is less important. The important thing is that Washington and Tehran are about to negotiate the future of Iran’s nuclear program, and the questions this raises are: what should we expect, and what should America do?
WHAT WE should expect is deceit.
Tyrannies don’t negotiate in good faith. Less than a year before he stormed Poland, Hitler promised the prime minister of Britain that once given “his” sliver of Czechoslovakia, Germany would have no more territorial demands.Similarly, at the Yalta conference in 1945, Stalin agreed to hold democratic elections throughout Eastern Europe’s liberated countries. Instead, he condemned their 75 million inhabitants to 45 despotic years.
Iran is in no position to conquer countries the way Hitler and Stalin did, but it is in a position to terrorize countries and unsettle humanity – as it indeed does and will continue doing – if not confronted.
Yes, the mullahs don’t have the kind of military power that the great tyrannies wielded but their fanaticism and ruthlessness are much the same. That is why their goal while dialoguing with Trump will be to buy even more time, undo some sanctions, and otherwise continue to oppress their citizens, harass neighbors far and wide, and spread their Islamist zeal.
This is of course besides retaining their military-usable nuclear program, in turn for nominally slowing some of its pace. None of this will change the overarching aims of Tehran’s foreign policy, which are threefold: impose Iran on the Middle East, Shi’ism on Islam, and Islam on humanity.
Negotiating with Iran is thus futile. Morally, the talks will ignore the main thing, which is that the Iranian regime destabilizes the world. Tactically, the mullahs will be dishonest. And strategically, dialoguing now will squander the dividends of the blows Iran was dealt in recent months, when it lost its Syrian bastion, Lebanese outpost, and aerial defense.
Coupled with the Iranian people’s political disillusionment, broken economy, and social despair, this is no time to accommodate the mullahs: It is time to defeat them.
What should be said
The talks that are scheduled to begin this weekend should therefore have never been engaged, but since talks are nonetheless ready to begin, Israelis of all political walks implore Washington to use them not to negotiate, but to serve an ultimatum, and this is what its carrier should say:
THE PRESIDENT of the United States has asked me to tell you to tell your supreme leader that the United States and its allies are ready to assault your military and annihilate it – tonight.
You have torched Saudi oil fields, hijacked Lebanon, dismembered Syria, lobbed missiles at Israel, attacked maritime commerce, spread international terrorism, and set out to top all this with a nuclear bomb.
This game now comes to its end. You are surrounded by us, and abandoned by your people. They won’t fight for you anymore than the Syrians fought for your ally Bashar al-Assad. Your choice, therefore, is the same choice Japan faced in 1945: surrender or die.
Unlike Japan you are given this choice before rather than after your country starts going up in flames.
If you want, the war you started in 1979 will now proceed to its final battle, the one you will not survive. Conversely, you can do as the Japanese did and surrender, but unlike the Japanese after the summer of ‘45, you can surrender before your destruction. For that to happen, you must now stage a political retreat.
This you will do in three installments, according to a timetable that you and I can agree on in these talks.
First, release all political prisoners throughout your country. Our intelligence services tell us there are at least 10,000 such prisoners of conscience. We expect a full list of their names and the prisons where they are held. A delegation of ours will start visiting them next week to determine their conditions and plan their release.
Second, legalize all political associations and, six months from today, hold free elections, supervised by us.
And third, recognize Israel. The country you have abused, harassed, and demonized – even though it did nothing bad to your people – is the American people’s friend; much the way it once was, and will now return to be, the Iranian people’s friend.
The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is author of Ha’Sfar Ha’Yehudi Ha’Aharon (The Last Jewish Frontier, Yediot Sefarim 2025), a sequel to Theodor Herzl’s The Old New Land.
