While the enthusiasm among Israelis for President Donald J. Trump’s Middle East policies has remained high, there are certainly some recent developments that might cause some wonderment, if not concern in Jerusalem.
Trump’s bombastic threat to unleash hell on Hamas-controlled Gaza, if the Israeli hostages are not returned turned out to be empty. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages (living and dead) are still being held in Hamas tunnels in Gaza. Now the Trump administration and its hapless envoy Steven Witkoff are negotiating with the radical and oppressive Iranian regime, dealing with its nuclear disarmament.
Among many Israelis, and particularly within sections of the political right of center, the election of Donald Trump was received with immense joy. The prevailing feeling was that the Republican victory will help Israel deal with its many enemies seeking its destruction, especially Iran.
Though still hoping that their trust in Trump will be actualized, Israelis should have listened carefully to Trump’s victory speech, when he emphatically said that he “will not start new wars but finish them.” This is perhaps why he sent Witkoff to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas and why Hamas released some Israeli hostages in February 2025.
Trump also dispatched Witkoff to Russia and Ukraine to help bring about a ceasefire and, ultimately, an anticipated peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv.
Trump is using the “carrot and stick” strategy. Regarding Iran, he is hoping to convince the ayatollahs to negotiate a deal that would end the Iranian race for a nuclear bomb, and in exchange (the carrot), the U.S. would help restore the disastrous Iranian economy. Trump’s businessman thinking is centered on business deals; however, the consequences might be strengthening the ayatollahs’ stranglehold on the Iranian people while removing regime change from the equation.
The “stick” in this case was the credible threats Trump made to use the military option if Iran continues to reject a deal for nuclear disarmament. The U.S. has moved two aircraft carrier task forces to the Middle East area and has positioned B-2 advanced bombers in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, within striking distance of Iran.
The initial response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Trump’s negotiation offers was negative. They refused direct talks with the U.S.; however, the show of force displayed by Trump left them little room to maneuver.
The Ayatollah Khamenei regime can live with economic sanctions, but the Iranian people may not. The ayatollahs’ regime doesn’t seem to care that much as long as it survives. Military action by the U.S. threatens the survival of the regime, and thus Tehran will put taqiyyah (dissimulation and deception) on high gear, certain that it will successfully deceive the naïve American negotiators.
President Trump may not understand that the Iranians are seeking to buy time. Tehran will seek to exhaust the Americans into giving it the best possible deal, and the Iranians might even agree to temporarily shelve their nuclear program, knowing full well that time is on their side. Trump will not be in the White House forever, and they can wait out Trump for a more pliable U.S. president and then go full speed ahead for a bomb. They will have all the tools and facilities in storage, and it won’t take long for them to acquire a bomb.
The current negotiations, headed by Witkoff, whom the Iranians will do all they can to bamboozle with their charm and “flexibility,” are bound to underwhelm. Witkoff, a real estate maven, is ignorant of Middle Eastern ways and of the Persian mind in particular. This offers the Iranians a golden opportunity to preserve their oppressive regime. Moreover, the negotiation with the Americans buys the Iranian regime quiet on the home front, and it presents the regime (hated by the majority of Iranians) as taking serious steps to improve the economy and remove the U.S. sanctions.
The Iranian regime may temporarily reduce its enrichment to a low level of 3.67, “demanded” initially by Witkoff, while being able to preserve its vital security interests, including the preservation of its nuclear program, albeit reduced in scope. The total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program is America’s primary interest in the negotiations, yet for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the nuclear program, and ultimately a nuclear bomb, guarantees the regime’s survival.
The Iranians will not do what the Libyan dictator Gaddafi did in 2003, when he voluntarily dismantled his nuclear program. They remember that in 2011, the West helped Libyan rebels topple the Gaddafi regime, and he was subsequently murdered. So ultimately, perhaps in two months, the “deal” or game will end, with Iran either getting a deal that is a bit harsher than the JCPOA but livable or, hopefully, Trump realizing that dealing with Iran is not another business deal and finally resorting to the military option.
It is hard to contemplate Trump initiating military action against Iran after promising to end wars and not start them. He has not experienced running a serious war situation, and the prosperity he promised to the American people will not happen with an expensive war. The alternative, however, is a nuclear Iran led by a fanatical regime that believes in an Islamic Armageddon that will usher in the arrival of the hidden imam.
With long-range missiles in the hands of the mullahs, and a nuclear bomb to boot, Iran is an existential threat not only to Israel, but to America and the entire world.
Israelis are still hoping that President Trump will recognize the threat from the current Iranian regime, and that ultimately only regime change in Iran might bring relative peace to the Middle East and beyond. Destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities might accomplish that.
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Image via Pixabay.
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
