Iran endgame nears as Trump faces two stark choices

President Donald Trump’s administration has bent over backward to negotiate an end to Iran’s grand plans to develop nuclear weapons — before the June 2025 bombing, afterward, and again during the follow-up diplomacy of spring 2026.Yet Iran is unlikely ever to abandon its pursuit of the bomb voluntarily.With nuclear weapons, Tehran hopes to become the de facto hegemon of the Middle East.And that is the charitable view, one that excludes the possibility of a messianic theocracy believing that eliminating Israel would forever ensure its Shiite minority permanent preeminence in the pantheon of Islamic jihadists.After three months of intermittent war, we are now better acquainted with Iran’s intentions and the realities of the conflict.The Iranian regime has never viewed “negotiations” as a path leading to an ultimate “deal.”At best, the regime’s supposedly “elected” government plays good cop, while the bad cop theocratic henchmen periodically violate whatever understandings have been reached.The regime’s art of “dealing” is not aimed at resolution but at gaining strategic advantage by postponing any military effort that leads to its demise.As a result, Iran does not necessarily regard overwhelming military defeat on the battlefield as a strategic loss.In terms of size, population, resources, wealth and military strength, Iran has been the most formidable adversary the United States has faced in the Middle East.Yet our losses in this war so far have been historically low, while the damage to the Iranian industrial, nuclear and military infrastructure has been immense and unprecedented.And while the United States has clearly won the shooting war, it has yet to secure the peace.One problem is the scarcity of accurate information: We have only rumors and spotty regime-fed reports of what is actually going on inside Iran, given there are neither US ground troops nor embedded Western reporters there.No one yet knows the full extent of the damage to...