OK! Let’s Give Iran Everything It Asks For
Fine. Granted. All of it. Every point of the ten-point plan. Every sanction lifted. Every asset unfrozen. Every obedient vote at the Security Council. Let us breathe deep and sign the surrender in a steady hand.
Let us see what the world looks like afterward.
Uranium, to begin
What? Enrich all the uranium they want? Granted. Let them produce whatever they want, at whatever percentage they want, in whatever centrifuges they want. Let every ship on the planet pay a war tax for crossing Hormuz, collected by a power that was just bombed. Let them accumulate every warhead that engineering and fissile material will allow. Let them do with those warheads whatever they please afterward.
Let them threaten Saudi Arabia. Let them threaten the Emirates. Let them threaten Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar. Let them threaten Israel. Let them launch, if they dare. One fraternal warning to the Palestinians, though: you will need to leave Gaza and Judea and Samaria before detonation, because geography does not discriminate by creed and radiological fallout does not either. You will need a new country. Perhaps the Prime Minister of Spain would like to receive you in Madrid, with state honors and a brand-new ministry to inaugurate.
Destroying Israel, in fact, has logistical difficulties few in Tehran admit out loud. It is not only that Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa would need to be pulverized. It is that the Islamic Republic will not want to reduce to ash the political project it has worked so hard to build on top of the Palestinian cause. The fallout reaches the neighbors. Lebanon, which barely breathes as it is. Jordan. Syria. Iraq. Iranians in Khorasan itself if the wind blows wrong.
But granted. Let them build the bomb. Two bombs. A thousand bombs. The United States and Russia hold roughly five thousand each. Why not Iran? Granted.
The missiles, of course
Ballistic missiles? All they want. As many as necessary. They have clearly advanced. The last salvo crossed half the Middle East and came within reach of Diego Garcia if the open-source reporting is accurate. Soon they will reach Europe. Later, North America. Later, Moscow. Later, Beijing.
Because for the Supreme Leader’s political Shiism, everyone else is an infidel, and today’s allies are merely the “less bad” of this particular decade. The roots of the atheist materialism of Communist Russia and China are still there, under the geopolitical makeup. At parity of force, they too would end up facing Tehran. There is always an excuse. There is always a schism. There is always a martyr.
And Europe. Poor Europe. Comparing it to the old Roman Empire in terms of strength is an act of historical cruelty. Europe does not enter this war for one sufficient reason: it is afraid of Iran. Brexit, the yellow vests, the migration crisis, the energy anxiety, all of it compacted into a continent that discovered too late that it can no longer defend itself on its own.
So, granted. Let them conquer what they want. Let them take Brussels. Let them take Madrid. Let them take Paris. Let them subjugate women wherever they can. Goodbye to Western feminism, which lasted less than the Islamabad ceasefire. Goodbye to the miniskirt. Goodbye to reproductive rights. Goodbye to a woman’s right to choose her own husband. In short, goodbye to every victory the progressive left has claimed over the last decades. And goodbye to your worldview too, whichever it happens to be, Christian, Jewish, agnostic, atheist, Hindu, Sunni, Buddhist, secular humanist. Submit to political Shiism, or face the consequences. Other values are arriving, and they do not ask for permission at the door.
The strait, the whole of it
Control the global economy by opening and closing Hormuz at will? Granted. Let them collect tolls. Let them seize ships with the ease with which a state collects taxes. Let them decide who gets oil and who does not, what share of the global market crosses their waters and what share stays dry at the dock. Twenty percent of the world’s oil? Make it fifty. Make it a hundred. All of it.
And if anyone disagrees, if anyone dares break the inverse blockade they will impose starting tomorrow, there are the ballistic missiles, the nuclear warheads, the kamikaze drones, the IRGC fast boats. And something more dangerous than any of the above: the readiness for martyrdom. There is no need to dwell on that truth. Whoever does not carry it will never understand it. Whoever does not fear it has not read the last forty years carefully.
The Persian Gulf as private lake. Five thousand years of naval history reversed in a single diplomatic afternoon. Granted.
A hundred billion, or better two hundred
The frozen assets? Returned. Every dollar. Every euro. Every yen in Tokyo, every won in Seoul, every riyal in Doha. More than a hundred billion dollars by conservative estimates. But let us not haggle. Two hundred. Three hundred. Whatever it takes.
To rebuild what has been destroyed since February 28. To re-equip Hezbollah. To resupply the Houthis. To reactivate the Iraqi militias. To reinforce Hamas if anything remains to reinforce. To accelerate the missile program. To refine the uranium. To buy sensitive components on the gray market. To pay engineers. To pay physicists. To pay generals.
All of it blessed by a binding Security Council resolution, with a Russian-Chinese veto guaranteed for life, shielded against any future revision.
Granted.
The bases, emptied
The Americans to leave the entire region? Granted. Out of Bahrain. Out of Qatar. Out of Kuwait. Out of the Emirates. Out of Iraq. Out of Jordan. Out of Syria. Goodbye to CENTCOM. Goodbye to the Fifth Fleet. Goodbye to the security umbrella that sheltered the Sunni Arab allies for seven decades.
Who fills the vacuum? Tehran first. Moscow next. Beijing shortly after. The Gulf allies, abandoned to their fate, will have to choose between submitting to the new Shia hegemon or looking for protection in another passport. Israel, alone. Jordan, alone. Egypt, praying.
Granted.
And so on
The list is long because the appetite is infinite. Each conceded point opens the door to a following point that was not in the original draft. That is how negotiated surrenders work. Munich worked that way, when Chamberlain handed the Sudetes to Hitler and came home waving a paper that promised peace for our time. Yalta worked that way, when Eastern Europe was signed over to Stalin in exchange for promises never kept. The JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action of 2015, worked that way, when billions were released to Tehran in exchange for a nuclear program that merely paused. Each signature bought months, not decades.
Too tiresome to write the full list. More tiresome still to read the fine print.
Everyone cheerful about whatever they choose to believe will last them. Many in the West will be happy, apparently, among the ruins.
But happy.
