“Help is on the way,” US President Donald Trump promised Iranians a month ago as my people rose in the Lion and Sun Revolution.
Ever since, tens of thousands of Iranians have been slaughtered on the streets, in hospitals, and in detention centers.
The violence unleashed by the regime has been so staggering that it has shocked Iranians who had lived under this Islamist occupation for almost five decades.
It has even shocked frontline journalists and human rights defenders like me, who have dedicated our lives to documenting atrocity crimes committed by the Islamic Republic. We thought we had seen all shades of human depravity. We were wrong – and the help is yet to arrive.
Whenever there is news that the strikes are imminent, people in Iran stay up till dawn because they expect the strikes to arrive before the first light. They stay up not because they fear the bombs: They want to see the glorious moment marking the end of the Islamic Republic. That moment will eventually arrive, with or without international intervention.
The American president, with a tweak of his pen, can cut the number of fatalities in the final battle for the liberation of Iran. However, for the sake of argument, let’s set aside the moral duty that the leader of the free world shoulders.
US president is sworn to put America first
After all, the US president is sworn to put America first. Coming from a country where political leaders see everything – from nukes to missiles to proxies – as a higher priority than the nation they rule, I not only appreciate President Trump’s America First policy, but also dream of a day when political leaders in Iran would serve my people with the same zeal.
So far, Trump, through the sheer power of his will, has pushed the Islamic Republic into a corner. With Operation Midnight Hammer, the president showed the world that he has no patience for on-again-off-again talks that lead nowhere. He also reminded the world of the military might of the United States.
After decades of bullying the world, the Islamic Republic received a proper trashing from the US and Israel with kinetic action halting when the regime’s nuclear facilities were buried under rubble. Now, the president has set his mind to definitively removing the regime’s three-pronged threat: nuclear, missile, and proxies.
Unlike his predecessors, President Trump does not treat the foreign policy toolbox with ideological orthodoxies. He weighs diplomacy, sanctions, and kinetic action only as “tools” to secure US national interests. And of course, the man who brought the world a path out of unending wars in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords is again tapping his knack for dealmaking to solve the world’s Iran problem.
If President Trump secures a good deal with Tehran, it will only be thanks to his cunning and determination. No US president has been able to do that so far. Furthermore, Trump would secure that deal after the deterioration of American deterrence due to the incompetence of his predecessors.
However, even a good deal is only as good as its enforcement. Past US presidents have failed to even enforce the bad deals they had forged with Tehran. Again, Trump, with his unorthodox methods, has repeatedly surprised the world by achieving what others would not even dare to imagine.
Unfortunately, nations seldom succeedively produce leaders of the high caliber of Donald Trump, and the US Constitution has put a term limit on this window of opportunity.
Only time will tell if a good deal can be secured and enforced with Tehran. But one thing is for certain: The moment President Trump steps out of the White House, even the best deal will unravel. That’s why Iranians chant: “No deal with mullahs.”
The author is the research director at the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI).