If America treats Iran as an equal strategic partner despite decades of terrorism, hostage-taking, proxy warfare, and nuclear brinkmanship, what message does this send to every authoritarian power watching? It teaches that sustained aggression works. That ideological extremism eventually earns a seat at the adult table. That democratic nations possess no enduring moral memory.

There are moments in history when a democracy makes a catastrophic intellectual mistake before it makes a military one. The mistake is not weakness alone. It is not naïveté alone. It is something more dangerous: the decision to morally elevate a hostile regime into the status of a legitimate equal partner while pretending that language itself can erase reality.

That is the inherent danger in Donald Trump’s negotiations with Iran.

Not negotiations themselves. Nations negotiate with enemies all the time. Churchill negotiated. Nixon negotiated. Even Israel has negotiated with sworn enemies when necessity demanded it. The danger begins when negotiations stop being tactical and start becoming theological — when America unconsciously grants the Iranian regime the dignity, legitimacy, and permanence of a normal civilization rather than recognizing it for what it is: a revolutionary regime built upon permanent hostility toward the West.

Iran is not merely another nation-state pursuing ordinary interests. The regime in Tehran is an ideological project. It survives through hatred. Hatred of America. Hatred of Israel. Hatred of liberal democracy. Hatred of Western modernity itself. Its revolutionary identity depends upon confrontation. To treat such a regime as a standard diplomatic counterpart is like inviting a pyromaniac to........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)