https://www.frontpagemag.com/trumps-negotiations-with-the-mullahs/
Recently an important report about President Trump and Iran was drowned out by the weeping and wailing over the president’s Liberation Day increases on tariffs. According to Park MacDougald on The Scroll, Axios reported that the president is “seriously considering an Iranian proposal for indirect nuclear talks” . . . and “the administration is now exploring next steps in order to begin conversations and trust building with the Iranians.”
More troubling, MacDougald writes, “Phillip Smyth emphasized that the Iranians, despite holding an extraordinarily weak hand, are effectively offering the White House nothing: no direct talks, no negotiation over ballistic missiles or the regime’s support for its regional proxies, and nuclear negotiation only within the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal.”
We shouldn’t underestimate the president’s commitment to deterrence, or doubt his will to follow through on his pledge to prevent Iran from going nuclear. He has brought back “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran, and deployed six long-range B2 stealth bombers to the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean––the only bomber able to drop “bunker buster” MOPS, “Massive Ordnance Penetrators,” 30,000-pound, precision-guided bombs capable of penetrating Iran’s underground hardened nuclear production facilities.
Also, as Smyth points out, Iran is the weakest it has been since its 1980-88 war with Iraq. Its proxies in the region have been neutralized, its economy is on the brink of collapse, its currency is approaching Weimar Germany levels of inflation, and its people are boldly disgruntled and increasingly restless. Now may be the best opportunity to end Iran’s nuclear ambition to destroy, Israel, which it mocks as a “one-bomb state.” Nor should we assume that self-preservation from a threatened repayment in nuclear kind will restrain the mullahs.