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Avi Benlolo: Trump is handing Iran a noose to hang itself with

By continuing to murder innocents and crack down on citizens, Iran is further providing justification for war

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If the past behaviour dictates future behaviour, there are two possibilities concerning the outcome of negotiations with Iran: either Iran’s well-known tactics of buying time and frustrating the United States will win the day, as it did in the Obama and first Trump administration, or U.S. President Donald Trump will eventually follow through on his threat and attack Iran, as he did Venezuela. If Iran refuses to give up its nuclear ambition and ballistic missile program, my bet is on Trump. He will go to war.

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Following another set of failed negotiations in Geneva, Vice President J.D. Vance acknowledged this week, “It was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.” Drawing on Iran’s past behaviour, America’s clear-eyed Secretary of State, Marco Rubio said earlier this week, “no one has ever been able to do a successful deal with Iran…but we’re going to try.”

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From Israel’s perspective, a successful deal with Iran involves more than neutering its nuclear and ballistics program — although that’s 80 per cent of the problem. A deal would have to defang Iran’s massive hold on the Middle East. It would have to end its sponsoring of terror proxies, especially Hezbollah and Hamas who remain a serious threat to Israel’s safety and security. At his meeting in Washington last week, Israel’s Prime Minister tried to discourage President Trump from negotiating with Iran.

“We’ll see if it’s possible. Let’s give it a shot” Trump told Netanyahu. What they did agree on was tightening the screws on Iran by increasing economic pressure, especially on oil. The sanctions strategy has been tried and failed. Western leaders still fail to see that the Iranian regime is driven by a radical Islamic ideology that seeks the destruction of the West over the growth and prosperity of its own citizens. The barbaric massacre of more than 30,000 of its own citizens — mostly young adults — is case in point.

The U.S. is handing Iran a noose waiting for it to hang itself. By continuing to murder innocents and crack down on citizens, Iran is further providing justification for the war. Meanwhile, the U.S. is surrounding Iran, tightening sanctions and its hold on shipping, while giving the regime one final chance through negotiation and diplomacy. Finally, Israeli security expert Sagiv Asulin contends, there will be a surprise attack consisting of a prolonged aerial campaign on regime symbols, with an objective of people taking to the streets.

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We all prefer peace over war and exploring every alternative. We all want to see every possibility for diplomacy to work. But haven’t we already done that? It’s entirely true, as former Middle East Envoy Jason Greenblatt posits that “the first victims of the Iranian regime are the Iranian people themselves.” But haven’t they suffered long enough?

The hundreds of thousands of diaspora Iranians who gathered in protest against the regime in Toronto, Munich, London and around the world understand what French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy contends: “Is any compromise possible with fanatics who proclaim that they prefer the apocalypse to defeat? I hope the American administration understands this. I hope it has grasped that the era of containment is over, that deterrence doesn’t work against a state that has made internal terror, regional destabilization, and the end of the world both a mode of governance and a program. The time for change has come.”

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A change is certainly coming. Speaking in Israel this week, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee wisely said, “there’s a lot of significant and legitimate doubt that the Iranians will ever agree to something that would cause them to lay down any ambitions of nuclear weaponry. At some point, the United States needs to say: enough is enough, we’re not going to continue to believe that they’re ever going to be different than they are. And it’s time for them to either make a radical change of their point of view and their direction, or for them to experience what we call in the south, the ‘second kick of a mule.”

We stand today at a critical juncture where Iran’s past behaviour cannot dictate future outcomes. All previous negotiations with Iran have failed. Iran continues to threaten the security of the Middle East, America and Israel. In June, by attacking Israeli civilian centres with ballistic missiles, it demonstrated its missile program is a real and viable threat. By callously mass murdering its own people, it demonstrated its deranged extremism that threatens the world.

Iran must not only be defanged of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, must be dethroned as well. The time is now.

Avi Abraham Benlolo is the founder and CEO of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative.

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