President Trump has demanded "unconditional surrender" from Iran's government. Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images For those at home and abroad who don’t know what to make of President Donald Trump’s talk of “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and how the next supreme leader is “not going to last long,” allow us to translate: He expects Iran to find leadership that isn’t committed to an insane Islamist agenda.
That is, one that won’t seek nuclear weapons and ICBMs, sponsor global terror (including efforts to assassinate him) or work to impose Islamist puppet governments across the Middle East — all at the expense of the long-suffering Iranian people.
Trump isn’t pushing any particular answer to these demands; the new leadership could come from parts of the current regime, patriotic figures from the regular military and/or even conceivably the tame “opposition” politicians the regime had allowed before its most recent crackdown.
Until then, US forces will keep destroying the ruling clique’s ability to project power — its navy, its bases, its missile and drone stocks and factories; its various other weapons facilities, nuclear or not; command-and-control assets for the Revolutionary Guards and basij militias.
Existing rebel forces — Kurds in the northwest, other ethnic forces elsewhere — and civil-society groups, such as the union movement, will also see US support of some kind.
This is markedly different from what Washington sought in Iraq under President George W. Bush or Libya under President Barack Obama: Trump doesn’t mean to nation-build like Bush, nor to foster the endless civil war that Obama produced.
Making Iran normal will be a win for its own people as well as for America, the greater Middle East and civilization generally.
Our president wants Iranians to figure it out, but won’t let the shards of Ayatollah Ali Khameini’s circle restore itself via his son or any other figure committed to the status quo ante — and those mullahs can’t force the folks with guns to obey.
That leaves plenty of power players who can find some reasonable arrangement to get the country back on the track toward a better future that the 1979 revolution derailed.
