Who is US President Donald Trump really negotiating with? The clerics? The Revolutionary Guard? Or the politicians?
The problem is that Iran is not governed by one power center. It is a three-headed dragon. One head wears a religious turban, one carries a military weapon, and one wears a political suit. But all three serve the same regime of terror.
The number one thing the regime wants is access to the quarter of a trillion dollars it has stashed outside of Iran. The mullahs know their economy is collapsing. Their proxies are weakened. Their people are angry. And now, with negotiations once again dominating headlines, the world is asking whether this regime can be trusted.
Feeding the dragon
Trump appears to understand what former US president Barack Obama never did: you do not feed a dragon and expect it to become weaker.
Under Obama, pallets of cash and sanctions relief strengthened the Iranian regime. That money did not build schools or hospitals. It fueled Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and the machinery of global terror.
Trump’s red lines are far clearer: Iran must stop threatening and blocking the Strait of Hormuz; it must give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium; and the regime must understand that the days of endless concessions are over.
Terror is their business
But can Trump negotiate in good faith with a terror regime that murders its own people in the streets? A regime that operates more like an Islamic mafia than a legitimate government?
The IRGC has no incentive to become peaceful. Terrorism is their business model. Chaos is their currency. Without terror, they lose power, money, and relevance.
Negotiating with apocalypse
Meanwhile, the clerics are driven by apocalyptic theology. They are Twelvers who believe they can usher in the arrival of the Mahdi through global chaos and catastrophe. They believe that through the apocalypse, the world will bow to Shi’ite Islam.
How do you negotiate rationally with leaders who believe destruction is destiny?
And then there are the politicians, the polished faces presented to Western diplomats and television cameras. But these politicians have spent decades in bed with the clerics and the IRGC. They are not separate from the system. They are part of the dragon itself.
Current negotiations involve discussions over frozen Iranian assets, sanctions relief, reopening shipping lanes, and temporary ceasefires. Yet even now, Iranian officials are publicly insisting they will not surrender control over uranium enrichment or the Strait of Hormuz.
One dragon, one heart
That is why the world must understand something clearly: this is not a normal government negotiating normal diplomacy. This is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism trying to survive.
The dragon has three heads, but one heart – and that heart is built on power, fear, and jihad.
The astonishing thing is not that negotiations are difficult. The astonishing thing is that people believe this regime will negotiate in good faith.
The writer has written 120 books and is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. He is the founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, the Ten Boom Museum in Holland, and Churches United with Israel, the largest Christian Zionist network in America, with more than 30 million followers.