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Steve Forbes is blunt: trying to cut a deal with the fanatical Iranian mullahs is a fool’s errand and a dangerous mistake. His column warns that continued bargaining hands our enemies the time and cover to rebuild and to bleed America’s strength while pretending to negotiate in good faith.
Washington did, in fact, open indirect channels — sending special envoys like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Geneva under Omani mediation — but those talks have produced little that meaningfully constrains Tehran. The optics of sending real estate cronies and celebrity intermediaries while the regime fires rockets and backs proxies only underlines the absurdity of trusting the mullahs’ promises.
Meanwhile the Pentagon has been preparing for the grim work real diplomacy can’t accomplish: planners say U.S. forces must be ready for potentially weeks-long operations if ordered to strike hard at Iranian capabilities. The reality is clear to any thinking commander — negotiations are a luxury the country cannot afford when the other side uses talks as a cigarette break between attacks.
Conservatives should remember that appeasement never works; Tehran has a long record of using diplomacy to stall, to split coalitions, and to buy time for its nuclear and proxy ambitions. The sensible path that Forbes lays out — returning to a policy of pressure that weakens the regime and empowers its opponents — is not warmongering, it’s realism in defense of American lives and interests.
President Trump has publicly hedged, even saying the decision to press on or pause might come down to a last-minute calculus with his negotiators, but hedging is precisely what plays into Tehran’s hands. If our leadership wants a lasting peace and safer seas for American commerce, it must stop flirting with fruitless deals and get back to the hard, strategic work of defeating an enemy that celebrates our hesitation.
There will be costs to strength — there always are — but the alternative is a drawn-out disaster of endless bargaining, rising oil prices, emboldened Iranian proxies, and the erosion of U.S. credibility from Seoul to Jerusalem. Conservatives who love this country should demand resolute leadership: use military pressure as leverage, cripple the mullahs’ ability to threaten the region, and let the Iranian people seize their moment without the clerical caste standing between them and freedom.
