There are junctures in the long, tedious practice of international diplomacy where the pretense collapses — when the patience of civilized nations finally exhausts itself before an adversary whose faith lies not in reason, but in theocracy. Donald Trump’s latest deadline to Tehran represents precisely such a moment. It punctures half a century of indulgent myth-making about the nature of the Iranian regime and restates, in unapologetically human terms, the ancient truth that fanaticism bows only to strength.

One might recall his final brutal warning to the mullahs in that unforgettable formulation — that if provoked, he would “end them for good.” The phrase scandalized the bien-pensant set in the salons and comment pages of the West, those professional pacifists who confuse moral seriousness with sentimental fatigue. Yet beneath its coarse simplicity lay an insight often lost in the polite fog of foreign policy: there are forces so steeped in apocalyptic delusion that negotiation is no longer moral diplomacy, but cowardly enabling.

I do not say this as a detached commentator, but as someone who has seen tyranny from within. I infiltrated the regime, witnessed its liturgies of oppression and the mechanical precision with which it manufactures belief. The Iranian system is not a government that governs; it is a machine that indoctrinates. It demands obedience as faith,........

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