As I gathered my thoughts for this column, I checked over at our sister site Townhall.com and found that Erick Erickson had stolen a good deal of my thunder. Not a surprise, as Erick is a smart man, and like the rest of us who are long-time, committed conservatives, states the obvious about what the nation faces in the ever-so-frail cease-fire with Iran: the threat isn’t so much Iran’s military capabilities or terrorism, it’s the very nature of the regime.
Lying is in its DNA.
Erick leads with a summary of taqiyya, which I’ll just quickly re-state here as the Islamic doctrine of lying or deception in service of the faith.
About a month ago, I wrote here that “theo-crazy” Iran was “defeated.” By every measure of military capacity, that declaration remains indisputable. The only way that changes is if Iran gets a nuke.
READ MORE: Via Iran and Venezuela, Trump Makes the Cold War Great Again
Donald Trump will not permit that. But short of a substantial and committed ground deployment that no one wants, there are only two ways to contain the nuclear threat – periodic operations like Epic Fury and Midnight Hammer, or a verifiable surrender by Iran of their nuclear program, which for them would amount to surrender in total.
But back to “theo-crazy”: by Western standards of diplomacy and international law, Iran is not a “rational” regime. It subscribes to a barbaric, medieval version of Islam that makes it especially inscrutable for the general Westerner. Their worldview, untethered to concepts, common assumptions, and ideals of the European Enlightenment and pluralist society, does not contemplate or consider such notions, except to dismiss and denigrate them. Expediting the arrival of the “Mahdi,” their messiah, as Erickson writes, is the culmination of this outlook – it is a totalitarian faith. And they welcome achieving this violently and apocalyptically.
By virtue of these characteristics, and many more, Iranians are decidedly not Western. Thereby, Western diplomacy and international law are of no value - even more so illegitimate and outright evil, so any concession, much less “deal” short of unconditional surrender proffered by such adherents can’t be assigned much, if any, confidence. Any other conclusion is delusion, or worse, foolishness.
Thus the teetering ceasefire. And the dispatch of Vice President Vance to lead negotiations in Islamabad this weekend. Republican and conservative hawks are suspicious of the vice president and his well-documented hesitance on both Trump operations against Iran, not to mention the VP’s friendship with Woke Reich personalities.
But this could very well be a calculated Trump deal-making tactic, a very dialed-down version of “Only Nixon can go to China.”
The Iranians have been clamoring for Vance, so he’s giving him to them.
READ MORE: Iran Tries to Play Games, but Trump Just Let Them Know How Few Cards They Have
Vance Puts Iran on Notice Ahead of Talks – 'Don’t Try to Play the U.S.'
But it is also likely no accident that just days in advance of the VP’s deeply-fraught Islamabad negotiations that the president leveled his second broadside in two months via his Truth Social platform at conservative/Republican-adjacent online personalities (referred to in some corners as “Podcastistan”).
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 9, 2026
He’s sending the vice president to Islamabad, but the clear message remains – Donald Trump calls the shots. And that means no nukes, no terrorism (including neighbor-country bullying), and no pirating the Strait of Hormuz.
For both the mullahs and the Trump administration, this ultimately means unconditional surrender. When you are faced with an adversary reliant on lies, no promise or guarantee can be taken or made with confidence. (Much less the fact that no-nukes is, again, de facto unconditional surrender for the mullahs, as their political objectives require them.)
Can then, a solution be found, this weekend, or any other time, given these terms and circumstances?
When I called the Iranians “theo-crazy” a month ago, it was in the context of an admittedly snark-heavy piece. But my serious point there, which I come back to now, is that Trump’s confrontation of the mullahs is a smaller piece of a larger strategy. I called it “Making the Cold War Great Again.”
During the 50-year, US-Soviet standoff, superpower peace was maintained in part (and prosperity concomitantly fostered in the United States) by containing Soviet adventuring and expansionism through proxies. Iran is one of today’s proxies. Trump, by denying Iran’s objectives, simultaneously contains today’s aspiring “Evil Empire,” China, by denial of energy from Iranian and other Gulf States’ oil. And if he gets Iran’s surrender and makes them an ally (as he’s already effectively done with its neighbors), he further tightens the noose not only on China, but on the former-Soviet superpower Russia, by driving its oil revenue down with new Iranian and other Gulf States’ supply on the world market.
So as we’ve seen, the ceasefire has been fraught, and given the nature of the adversary, a waste of time. Delivering an outright unconditional surrender by Vance as emissary would be the proverbial master stroke. Otherwise, Cold War-style containment will be the inevitable default.
In either, case the president will be, as always, keeping America First. The only worry is if Vance goes “Woke Reich” in Islamabad – highly unlikely given his boss and Vance’s 2028 ambitions.
“Only Vance can go to Pakistan.”
Editor's Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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