History shows tyrants in Iran, Russia and China only respond to decisive force, not empty talks Sometimes, you need to give war a chance By Clifford D. May
“You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.”
That aphorism, attributed to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, has always struck me as more hopeful than convincing.
Americans didn’t make peace with the Nazis. We made peace with those we permitted to hold power in Germany after we decisively defeated the Nazis.
Since Hamas’ invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, its strategy has been Leninist: “The worse, the better,” meaning the more that Gaza Strip residents suffered, the worse it would be for Israel and the better for Hamas.
The terrorists understood the animus toward Israel of United Nations officials, faux human rights organizations, leftists in the media and radical activists on campuses.
Hamas gave Gaza residents a choice: “Conquest or martyrdom!” Those preferring a third option were out of luck.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has long been Hamas’ most important backer.
He sees himself as a revolutionary and a jihadi. He claims to be the “deputy” on earth to Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, a messianic figure in Shiite Islam.
Like his friends in Hamas, he has no interest in making peace with those he regards, for theological reasons, as his enemies.
It is not true that his hatred of Israel, America and the West in general has to do with “grievances,” such as the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. (As an aside, Iranian-born scholar Ray Takeyh’s essays on the topic in Foreign Affairs and Commentary make clear that the CIA and MI6 were not key players in that affair.)
President Trump hoped the 12-day war last month might persuade Mr. Khamenei to curb his ambitions, to conclude, however reluctantly, that peacemaking was in the best interest of his regime.
On Truth Social, the president posted: “Iran has to get back into the World Order flow, or things will only get worse for them.”
Yet the ayatollah is insisting that his regime was “victorious” in the conflict and that it “delivered a heavy slap to America’s face.”
Threats to assassinate Mr. Trump as an “enemy of Allah” have been renewed.
Mohammad-Javad Larijani, a top Khamenei adviser, declared on Iranian state television that Mr. Trump “can no longer sunbathe in Mar-a-Lago” because a “small drone might hit him in the navel.”
According to the best assessments, American B-2s and Massive Ordnance Penetrators set back Tehran’s nuclear weapons program by roughly two years.
The regime’s fangs may need to be trimmed again. Such dentistry can be performed by the U.S., Israel or both.
Absent that, the theocrats will rebuild their nuclear weapons programs while continuing to support terrorists abroad. Their brutalization of civilians at home, especially minorities, has accelerated in recent days.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is another unsavory enemy with whom it is not possible to make peace. His immediate mission is to turn Ukraine into a vassal state like Belarus or a colony like Chechnya and Tatarstan.
So long as Mr. Putin believes that goal remains achievable, he will persist in raining death from the sky onto Ukrainian civilians. In recent days, he has deployed nearly 1,000 drones, more than 1,000 guided aerial bombs and almost 100 missiles.
Mr. Trump now appears to grasp that reality.
During a Cabinet meeting last week, he said: “We get a lot of bull—— thrown at us by Putin.” He added: “I don’t think he’s looking to stop, and that’s too bad.”
With that in mind, the president reversed an order from “restrainers” in the Pentagon to halt munitions shipments to Ukraine.
Those restrainers apparently don’t understand what a serious mistake it would be for Mr. Trump to abandon Ukraine as President Biden abandoned Afghanistan.
Xi Jinping, China’s ruler, would reason: “Biden capitulated to the Taliban and now Trump won’t even sell American weapons to Ukrainians being slaughtered by Putin. That tells me I needn’t worry about any American president sending his warships and fighter jets to defend the Taiwanese.”
On Monday, Mr. Trump said he would impose 100% “secondary” tariffs on Russia’s trading partners — the countries financing Russia’s war machine — if Mr. Putin doesn’t conclude a ceasefire within 50 days.
He also said he would send Ukraine Patriot missile defense batteries, which NATO members would fund.
Left unclear was whether Ukraine also will receive long-range rockets and permission to use them to strike military targets deep inside Russia. Such permission, which Mr. Biden refused to grant, is necessary to convince Mr. Putin that, in the end, the war he takes will be equal to the war he makes.
Two final questions for today:
• What’s the chance that Mr. Xi will accept the fact that the free people of Taiwan don’t want to be ruled by the Communist Party of China and that he should therefore make peace with them?
• What’s the chance that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will accept the fact that the free people of South Korea don’t want to live under his jackboot and that he should therefore make peace with them?
You know the answers.
It’s also unrealistic to believe that the rulers of Russia, China, Iran and South Korea — an axis grounded in anti-Americanism — will make peace with America.
What is realistic is for Americans to limit the ability of these unsavory enemies to successfully wage war against us and other free nations.
“Peace through strength” implies nothing more, and nothing less, than that.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
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