If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a Trumpian say that Donald Trump is the world’s best negotiator, I’d surely have enough to take my wife to a nice restaurant (at least once!). I’m not saying that Mr. Trump doesn’t know how to negotiate, but the proof is clearly in the pudding in many of our foreign policy actions. Mr. Trump had his harshest trade position on the Chinese, and yet we crumbled as soon as they played the rare earths card. Mr. Trump confidently told us he’d end the Ukraine-Russia war in a day, and yet day after day we see another 1000+ casualties on the Russian side along with significant (but much smaller) casualties on the Ukrainian side (not to mention the civilians that Mr. Putin likes to kill in their apartments at night while they are sleeping). And closer to home, the Iran war effort has ceased with a military victory failing to lead to an overall outcome which achieves our strategic objective. My hope and prayer is that it will, and it may well yet.* But here is the key point. It is entirely one thing to negotiate a business deal, where both sides will ultimately benefit (a win-win) and you’re simply trying to get as much of the gains from trade for yourself, and deals with adversaries, where often the deal is at best zero-sum (where for one to win the other must lose). In a business deal, both sides are only entering into a discussion because they want a deal. Indeed, the optimal strategy in a repeat game is to make sure the other side wins too. And that is basically the free market at work. Every day we make deals with people that sell as something, and they have an incentive to bless our socks off. Then we’ll come back, and they’ll make more money.

But in key foreign policy issues with adversaries, it gets much more difficult. There is no positive deal that Donald Trump can do to get Vladimir Putin to forego his dream of a reconstituted Russian Czarist empire. The only thing that could get him to do that are actions that would bring us closer to direct conflict with Russia; actions that neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Trump were and are willing to take. And in Iran there is likewise no “deal” to be made; what is needed is regime change and obviously the regime is unwilling to eliminate themselves. Mr. Trump has nothing to offer them that they will willingly take. In this scenario, we must simply win and force compliance. Many on the left are foolishly saying our Iran war has made the regime stronger, since they’ve shown they can stand up to us, IRGC leadership may possibly (who knows) be even more hostile, and now they’ve shown they can control the passage in the strait. This is preposterous, of course. Iran has been incredibly weakened in the key areas we are most concerned about–their ability to make nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. If we left today the timeline for a future president to deal with the problem is significantly down the road. But the weapon of mass destruction we really need to be concerned about is the regime itself. As long as it survives, it will continue to terrorize its neighbors both directly and via proxies. Which is why the cease-fire to get a deal seems a fool’s errand. With this regime, there is simply no deal to be had, no matter how masterful the negotiator.

It’s time to resume the kinetic operations to help the regime understand inevitability.

* The economic blockade we are levying is brutal. The question is how fast it will work versus our country’s willingness to take minor economic pain. Time is not on either our or Iran’s side.