After close to a month of nationwide protests and an estimated tens of thousands of murders by the Islamic Regime in Iran, US President Donald Trump faces a defining choice: provide concrete support to demonstrators as promised or try to de-escalate with an off-ramp that can be spun as a win.
The regime has admitted at least 5,000 deaths, while reports by officials and human rights organizations place the number as high as the 30,000s.
Two weeks ago, Trump posted on Truth Social, saying, “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”
This post inspired a surge in the already-growing protests- but the help never came. Instead, Iranians were met with an internet blackout for 20 days, and foreign mercenaries from Iraq and Afghanistan indiscriminately shot at innocents from the back of trucks, in images that closely resemble those of October 7.
Yet, as time goes on, the question has always remained when the US would take military action against Iran. Now, unfortunately, the question has shifted from “when” to “if.”
As noted in a recent analysis by The Jerusalem Post’s Amichai Stein, part of the problem faced by the Trump administration is the severe diminishing of the protests following weeks of murder by the regime. In other words, Trump isn’t certain at the moment that if he were to strike Iran, opposition elements would be present to act on the momentum and overthrow the regime.
The problem is that Trump forfeited the right to hinge his action on the status of protest momentum because he failed to deliver when the protests were at their peak, when he promised to provide help if Iranians took to the streets.
By having advisors signal that the protests' momentum is a key factor, the Trump administration is avoiding its responsibility and signaling that it is desperately seeking an off-ramp.
Additionally, a senior US official told the Post on Monday that the administration is “open for business,” adding that Iran “knows our number, if they want to get in touch with us.”
While it's unclear what kind of talks this entails, whether it be revisiting nuclear deal talks from June, or something else entirely, the openness to speak with a regime conducting a mass slaughter of its own civilians that the Trump administration declared must come to an end shows that the approach in the White House isn’t moral, but rather opportunistic.
An off-ramp will always be tempting. If Trump is already having doubts, it wouldn't be hard for Iran to agree to a watered-down version of the nuclear deal that was in progress before the June War with Israel. And whether the deal is a good one or not, it would be easy for Trump to sell it as a win.
He could declare victory in classic Trump-like fashion, saying he had the art of the deal know-how to catch Iran at its weakest and force it to sign an agreement it would otherwise oppose. It would be equally as easy for his party to get on FOX News and explain how this was a clear demonstration of Trump’s peace through strength doctrine by making Iran bend the knee, and now it is up to the people of Iran to decide their own fate, effectively leaving the protesters at the mercy of the regime.
However, treating this crisis like a business deal would betray those who risked their lives, and some who were even murdered, based on explicit assurances from Washington. It would also ensure the survival of a terror-infested regime that literally brings in foreign mercenaries to slaughter its own population on the streets, in hospitals, and in their own homes.
In many cases, Trump’s business-like approach to diplomacy and statesmanship has proven to be out-of-the-box and surprisingly effective. This cannot be one of those times. For the sake of the thousands that were killed, and the millions across the world under threat every day by the regime’s proxies, Trump can’t afford to do what makes sense from a business perspective. He must do what’s right.