Negotiations between the Iranian regime and the Trump administration resume in Pakistan this weekend. Vice President J.D. Vance heads the U.S. delegation and is clearly determined to stop the fighting. 

Hard experience with such diplomacy over the past four decades makes one thing clear: Parleying with Iran’s sharia-supremacists may – I repeat, may – give the appearance of temporarily lessened hostilities. Unfortunately, since it necessarily involves perpetuating the ayatollahs and their loyalists’ hold on power, the threat they pose simply further metastasizes.

The alternative is now the only hope for avoiding what the brilliant George Rasley has correctly described as a stunning tactical victory lost to a catastrophic strategic defeat. That is to help achieve a different government in Iran – one representing, instead of murderously repressing, its people, not restricting the Strait of Hormuz, not pursuing nuclear weapons and not seeking Death to America. 

This is Frank Gaffney.