Capitulate – to surrender, stop resisting, or give in to an opponent or an irresistible force, often under agreed-upon terms.

George Rebane

The Trump administration’s emerging strategy in the Middle East is culminating in what can only be described as a diplomatic and strategic disaster. What was marketed to the American public as a masterclass in “peace through strength” is rapidly devolving into a masterclass in strategic surrender. The administration is laying the groundwork to mask a total withdrawal behind a smokescreen of triumphalism.

It appears that the administration is preparing to retreat on all foundational demands that justified American engagement in the first place. The concessions being drawn up represent a wholesale abandonment of regional security:

• The Strait of Hormuz: The vital waterway is being reopened by Iran without any ironclad, long-term guarantees from the regime that it will remain toll-free and unharassed.
• Nuclear Weapons: The regime’s highly enriched uranium stockpile remains a catastrophic threat, with concrete enforcement mechanisms inexplicably punted into future negotiation windows where Iran will undoubtedly stall and defect.
• Long-Range Missiles: The agreement leaves unaddressed and intact Iran’s arsenals of nuclear-capable long-range missiles, preserving its infrastructure for global terror.
• Funding Terrorism: The deal portends nothing to stop the Mullahs from continuing their bankrolling of proxy terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

Instead of securing vital American and allied interests, the administration’s apparent plan is to summarily declare victory and retreat. The strategy appears to loudly proclaim a historic triumph, sign a hollow memorandum of understanding, and pull out American forces, effectively lifting the very pressure that was supposed to bring Tehran to its knees.

This illusion of victory will not survive contact with reality. Both Republicans and Democrats will view such a declaration and subsequent pullout for exactly what it is: complete capitulation to the Muslim mullahs. Hardline Republicans are already warning that the regime will simply march back onto the road toward nuclear weapons and global terrorism while repressing its own people.

For the Democrats, this failed strategy provides more ammunition than they could have ever hoped for. They will have a clear, irrefutable mandate to tell Americans that the conflict was a colossal mistake—costly in time, talent, and treasure—and disastrously executed from the start. They will point to the billions spent and the lives lost/disrupted, contrasting those heavy costs with a final agreement that achieves none of its pre-war objectives.

This capitulation does more than just damage American credibility abroad; it sets up a domestic political catastrophe. By demoralizing voters, projecting profound weakness, and handing the opposition a ready-made narrative of systemic incompetence, such capitulation sets up the socialists for a resounding victory in November. Make no mistake: a Democratic victory in November will hamstring the administration and set the country on a course to fundamentally transform America into a collectivist future of poverty and misery.

How did this come about? The answer lies in a basic misunderstanding of the administration’s core competency. The harsh reality is that Trump has had no genuinely successful negotiations per se during his term.

He prevails only when he holds all the cards and can simply issue one-sided demands to a captive counterpart. But true negotiations involve parties with different interests who have definite wants, for which they are prepared to give up something the other party desires. It is not entirely clear that as president Trump has ever successfully entered into—let alone concluded—such a complex negotiation on the world stage. He operates in an echo chamber of his own making, unable to sense whether he is headed for a win-win or zero-sum resolution. By centralizing all power and treating delicate geopolitical standoffs with the same blunt force as, say, a real estate dispute, he prioritizes the immediate public relations “win” over the substantive, grueling work of securing a lasting agreement.

For students of post-Bolshevik geopolitical history, this litany of failures had predictable and obvious harbingers. The Soviet Union’s early diplomatic maneuvers routinely exploited the West’s impatience and desperation for a declared “peace.” Totalitarian regimes—whether the Bolsheviks of the 20th century or the theocrats in Tehran today—do not view negotiations as a vehicle for mutual compromise. They view them as tactical pauses to consolidate power and exploit the adversary’s desire to withdraw.

Bottom line, there is literally nothing to negotiate with the murderous Mullahs.  The only negotiations should be with our allies to determine an acceptable path to the regime’s unconditional surrender.

By failing to understand the ideological rigidity and absolute patience of his adversaries, the administration has fallen into a predictable historical trap. In its rush to declare a win and exit the stage, the administration is securing nothing but its own defeat, mortgaging America’s future, and inviting the very domestic and international disasters it promised to prevent.