I have been watching reports of negotiations between President Trump’s administration and the Islamic Republic of Iran with an anguish that is difficult to put into words. I want to believe that my president understands what he is dealing with. I want to believe that this time will be different. I want to believe that he understands what I know as the truth about the Islamic Republic: that you can never negotiate with them, and they will always lie and do anything to stay in power, and in control, of more than 90 million Iranians.

I have never lived in the White House, but I have lived inside this regime’s cruelty. I spent most of my life subjugated by its misogyny as a woman. I have suffered in its prisons. I have heard its promises, and its threats. I have witnessed friends, and my husband, tortured and executed. And I know, with every part of my being, that a deal with the Islamic Republic is not a path to peace. It is a gift of time to an evil regime that has always used time as a weapon.

In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini came to power on a wave of promises. Many Iranians, including university students and idealists of every stripe, believed him. They could not yet see the true nature of what they were welcoming. It did not take long. The bloodshed began almost immediately. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians who dared to protest were killed. I grew up in the shadow of that reality, and eventually I became one of its targets, imprisoned and sentenced to death for the crime of following Jesus.

What I learned inside those prison walls is the same thing the world keeps refusing to learn outside them: this regime does not negotiate in good faith. It negotiates for survival. Lying – taqiyya – is........

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