There’s an old tale about a farmer who recognized there was only one way to deal with his donkey. He had to strike it twice on the head with a two-by-four—the first time simply to gain its attention, the second to get it to listen to what he had to say.
Read more Democrats board the crazy train in New York
Not to trigger animal rights activists by relating this tale, it is shared simply to underscore the more serious problem of how to negotiate a meaningful deal with Iran’s mullahs who are predisposed not to submit to the West.
The singularly critical issue of the talks is how do we get them successfully to comply with terms of a deal when they have no history of honoring compliance? We face the same problem the farmer did in gaining the attention of an ass to make it toe the line.
The negotiations between Iran and the U.S. under the administration of President Barack Obama, ending in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), were significantly flawed—both in the terms of the agreement itself and the negotiating tactics to get it.
As to the first issue, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies—a nonpartisan institute focusing on national security and foreign policy—identified several flawed JCPOA terms/non-terms : no sanction against a nuclear development program; setting preset expiration dates by which certain restrictions were to be lifted; ultimately allowing weapons development; no IAEA investigation mandate to determine the extent of any existing weaponization and missile-delivery research/development and if such activities had ceased; no ratification of the IAEA Protocol, joined by 141 other countries, providing the international agency with more extensive inspection rights; no disclosures concerning Iran’s ballistic missile programs; the lifting of the UN embargo banning international military trade with Iran, even allowing it to acquire ballistic missile components/technology; allowing Tehran access to $150 billion of its money which was then used to further its international terrorism efforts; etc.
As to the second issue—U.S. negotiating tactics—they leave as much to be desired today as they did under Obama. We have repeatedly failed to remember what the driving force behind the Iranian leadership’s mindset is and that it continues to them today. They are hellbent on the destruction of the U.S.—a result to be achieved en masse or via plotting individual assassinations of our leaders.
A consistent ploy of the mullahs has been to draw out negotiations, knowing time delays work to their advantage. A U.S. president has four or, at most, eight years to implement his Iran-related policies while the mullahs have all the time in the world as they quietly continue pursuing their long-term objectives.
At a time U.S. negotiators should have been playing hardball with the mullahs, they played softball. When we needed a team of “Rambos” to negotiate, we were given a team of “Pee Wee Hermans.” The absence of toughness by the U.S. was taken by the mullahs as a major weakness to be exploited.
Read more An admittedly oddball theory about the MOU and Trump’s long-term plans
If we turn our clocks back four decades, we can see that one non-Muslim country—the former Soviet Union—proved successful in showing the world how to negotiate with Muslim terrorists of the mullahs’ ilk.
On September 30, 1986, four Soviet diplomats were kidnapped by unknown terrorists in West Beirut, Lebanon. The terrorist group responsible did not immediately acknowledge responsibility, leaving Moscow to speculate as to the motivation for the kidnapping. But the Soviets realized time was not on their side and the longer they remained indecisive, the more likely their diplomats would not survive. Additionally, they knew the importance of coming up with a plan of action that would discourage future actions against their diplomats.
Accordingly, they identified a key Muslim fundamentalist leader in Beirut (there was a long list from which to choose) and moved quickly to locate his family. Abducting a male member of that family, they had him castrated, immediately sending the severed testicles to the terrorist leader. While the leader did not know whether his victimized relative had been shot in the head and killed before or after the castration, the message was clear—more mutilations would follow unless the Soviet diplomats were released.
Three of the diplomats were quickly released alive and unharmed; the body of the fourth—who had been killed two days after the kidnapping—was released as well. Responsibility for the kidnapping was later attributed to the Islamic Liberation Organization, which had been hoping to pressure Moscow to force Syria to end an offensive operation it had undertaken against Muslim fundamentalists in Tripoli. But the group—as well as other Muslim extremists who might have been thinking about kidnapping Soviet diplomats—was taught a lesson in brutality never to be forgotten.
Obviously, the U.S. would never adopt the Soviet approach. However, what the Soviet response tells us is that, in any negotiations with Iran, there can be no quarter. Deadlines must be set and the consequences of failing to meet them must be dealt with as promised. A certain mindset has historically been engrained within Islamic leaders, exhibited by the likes of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi—men who recognized a reverence for strength had to be built upon the fear it would be brutally used.
A well known 1980s ad for the investment firm Smith Barney declared, “We make money the old fashioned way. We earn it.” Similarly, we must earn Iran’s fear. The mullahs must come to fear that any act of non-compliance will always be met with devastating consequences.
Image generated by ChatGPT.