Key Points – While Israel’s “Operation Rising Lion” has degraded Iran’s nuclear program, the question of regime change versus denuclearization as the ultimate goal remains.
-A complete military victory that dismantles Iran’s nuclear capabilities, similar to Israel’s past strikes on reactors in Iraq and Syria, is one possible outcome.
-However, efforts at regime change have a poor historical track record.
-As the conflict continues, any new negotiations will require strict preconditions, including Iran agreeing to the complete and verified destruction of its enrichment infrastructure.
-The rational move for the Iranian regime, if it wishes to survive, would be to concede military defeat and renounce its nuclear ambitions.
The Iran War Endgame Questions
On July 20, 1988, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini got on the radio to announce the end of the Iran-Iraq War. “It’s like drinking from a chalice of poison,” he said, but his regime’s survival depended on taking a sip.
Many American critics of Israel’s strike on Iran’s nuclear program and terror infrastructure complain that Jerusalem’s actions made diplomacy to resolve the nuclear impasse almost impossible.
This confuses the forest with the trees: The purpose of the diplomacy, at least from Washington’s perspective, was to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran and Diplomacy
What chief envoy Steven Witkoff and many in the State Department never understood is that Iranians look at diplomacy differently.
For Tehran, diplomacy is an asymmetric war strategy meant to distract opponents while they run down the clock, not a mechanism to resolve disputes in good faith. During a June 14, 2008, debate at the University of Gilan, for example, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a close aide to former president Mohammad Khatami, argued that Khatami’s successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had bungled strategy with his polemics and bluster.
Rather than alarm the West, Ramezanzadeh argued, Iran should conciliate it. “We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity,” Ramezanzadeh said. “Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.”
What Trump Wants from Iran
President Donald Trump now demands a complete cessation and forfeiture of Iran’s nuclear program. This is a correct demand. Those who argue that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can never surrender Iran’s nuclear program forget history.
Twice Khomeini reversed course, first with regard to what it would take to release American hostages seized in 1979. The Islamic Republic’s isolation had become too costly, especially after Iraq’s 1980 invasion. Second, it agreed to a ceasefire short of toppling Saddam. That was the context of Khomeini’s poison quip.
What Happens Next?
The result of diplomacy—or military action—matters more than the process of diplomacy. The only issue for Khamenei should be the regime and his survival. Khamenei may worry that an unconditional surrender of his nuclear program—with Israeli or American inspectors entering Fordow to truck out all equipment, material, and documents—would be the death knell for his regime.
It may be, but that is neither the problem of the White House nor the State Department.
Peace need not be “fair.” Khamenei, frankly, has no one to blame but himself for defying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for more than a quarter century, causing Iran’s referral by the International Atomic Energy Agency to the United Nations Security Council in the first place.
Nor can Khamenei complain after decades of attacking Israel by proxy and then doing so directly in April 2024.
It is time for Trump to give Khamenei a chalice of poison.
About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. The views expressed are his own.
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DOYLE-3
June 18, 2025 at 5:02 pm
The world, in 2025, has become a very extremely dangerous place where the leader of one country can order the leader of another country to surrender as…”We know your exact location.”
Whatever happened to the UN.
Only the UN can tell or advise somebody to surrender.
But today, right now in 2025, the world has clearly returned to the era of genghis khan.
During the great stupendous era of genghis, one of his very famous strategies or tactics was to send an emissary to a place or town or city to ask their people to surrender.
If they quickly agreed to surrender, usually or generally, genghis treated them well. But if they refused, well, genghis would tell his troops “The field is ripe. Bring in the harvest.”
Now, today, the ghost of the almighty genghis is ruling over humankind.
Swamplaw Yankee
June 19, 2025 at 5:16 am
The Rubin example is always ignored at the Yankee Inner beltway aquarium. The big fish at the State department just ignore Kitman or any of the other categories of muslim lying to non-muslims. The categories are out there for the peer reviwer to read up on.
“Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities” is the best Kitman blab exposure of the lie to the non-muslim.
Putin, Xi, 3T, the whole crowd can ignore the MAGA POTUS, and poof, in 18 months, the POTUS is a figurehead. ( 3T stands for the Third Trudeau).
Putin just shovels out long-game Kitman to the State Department, who stare at the Orc muscovite “Redlines” full of Kitman. The Czar structure of peasant russia learned Kitman from centuries of warfare with muslim after muslim khan wantabee.
Trump swallows the Putin Kitman whole and the MSM show Trump barking out the commie redline on Ukraine as if it was related to truth.
The Han CCP Xi cabal plays the good long game Kitman, as about over half of the Han are muslim. While the CCP keeps its parrot immans close to the chains, the shovel of CCP Kitman to the WEST is eagerly devoured by much of the MSM of the WEST.
The local Kitman is educational to the Doodle Dandy reader. Mexico demands free USA tax funded air protection, so Mexican drug cartels can profitably deal with Xi, and supplies zero Mexican cash for the 70 year old unpaid bill.
3T just outplayed the POTUS Trump on NATO defence funding. By a bit of Enron accounting, Canada has a magical 2% defence budget. Even if the MAGA rank and file are shown this by MAGA elite, 3T will be in power in Canada way after the MAGA have vanished from the inner beltway. Throwing a few pennies at military hardware for Ukraine, for items they need less, keeps the MAGA elite confused and the local Ukrainian diaspora satiated.
What ever 3T does in Canada, he has tax funded his NPR double what it had in tax dollars before his very recent election.
Rubin asks a basic question well. Will there be a regime change?
Rubin needs to ask that one question of Putin! Why is MAGA elite so in love with fascist Putin? The 2014 POTUS Obama unilateral greenlighting of the free, no cost giveaway of Ukrainian Crimea and the Black/Azov Sea zones to the prime, vile cold war enemy of the WEST: Putin: needs a MAGA POTUS Trump revenge campaign. This Kitman by the Obama-Biden-Democrat Cabal in 2014 to facilitate the butchery of Ukrainians is the one long-game election issue that might get a second MAGA president elected.
But, there is no one in the WH with the brains to start this winner! The current MAGA all scream out loser, especially with the foreign affairs lovefest with the peasant russian muscovite butchers.
Boy, this is the BIG win for the MAGA rank and file that I could run 100% ! The tragedy is that the lights are on in the WH. The Crime is that nobody who demands to be a Winner, is inside the West Wing! -30-