The Islamic Republic only survives on war dont give Tehran what it craves

“It’s getting to be decision time” on Iran, President Donald Trump said Sunday.“Do I finish it off, which would be very easy to do, or do I make a deal?” he mused in a Fox News interview.On Tuesday, at a get-out-the-vote rally in Lubbock, Texas, he put the choice on a clock.“You’ll see Iran in a couple of weeks,” he said — the window that opens after Election Day, Nov.3.US and Israeli military planners have reportedly mapped out a short post-midterm campaign against Iran’s nuclear, missile and energy sites; some officials think three days of strikes could force concessions.I spent eight years at the Treasury Department tightening sanctions on this regime — and I want it gone.Which is why the next round of bombs should stay in the racks.True, Iran is seeking to rebuild what Operation Epic Fury destroyed.But another round of attacks would hand the regime the one thing that keeps it alive: a war.The better answer is neither strike nor deal.It’s to hold the pressure, point any force at the regime’s enforcers — and make them run a broke country with no war to hide behind.The Islamic Republic is built to fight, not to govern; it survives when it is fighting.In January, the regime answered protests over a collapsing rial with the deadliest crackdown in its history: Its Health Ministry reportedly put an internal count of the dead at more than 30,000 on Jan.

8 and 9 alone.The war that the regime’s own conduct made unavoidable began on Feb.28.It lost its supreme leader that day and did not fall.Since then it has imposed what Amnesty International calls the longest internet shutdown on record, 88 days; arrested more than 6,500 supposed “traitors and spies”; and carried out at least 39 political executions by late May.The war emptied the streets of protesters — and let the regime finish what it had started.But the pressure on it since is unprecedented.Iran’s crude loadings fell from about 2 million barrels a day in March to 740,000 in Jul...