ArcaMax

President Trump canceled a delegation of U.S. negotiators about to head to Islamabad for continued negotiations with Iran because it appeared no one from the Iranian regime planned to show up. It’s past time to consider whether the American side truly knows the goals of the Iranian side. Such knowledge is key to success.

In his often quoted “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu wrote: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy or yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” This is often interpreted to mean one must think like one’s opponent.

There is little evidence I’ve seen that indicates the U.S. knows or understands the thinking of the Iranian regime. Quite the opposite.

One of my trusted sources on how radical Islamists think is retired Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger. In his newsletter he writes: “Iran’s Regime Change Requires Rewriting its DNA.”

What is that “DNA”? Ettinger explains: “The 1979 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the roadmap of the Ayatollah’s vision. It lays the religious, ideological, historic and strategic foundation of the systematic, rogue, fanatic, anti-US domestic, regional and global conduct of Iran’s Ayatollah regime, which transformed (Iran) from ‘The American Policeman of the Gulf’ into a leading global epicenter (in cooperation with China, Russia, North Korea and Hezbollah) of anti-US wars, terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and the proliferation of military systems, such as predator drones sold to Mexico’s drug cartels.”

And this: “The Ayatollahs’ Constitution provides the guidelines for the exportation of the Islamic Revolution by utilizing subversion, terrorism, civil wars, the proliferation of ballistic technologies, drug trafficking and proselytization in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America (the US’ soft underbelly) and on US soil. The strategic goal of the Ayatollahs’ Constitution is to establish a universal Shiite society, based on the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini, and bring to submission the Sunni Moslem ‘apostates’ and the non-Moslem ‘infidels.’ A victory over US despotism!”

The regime uses diplomacy as a means to achieve its stated goal, mandated, they believe, by Allah, which is spelled out in its constitution and theology.

If the U.S. side does not fully understand the motivation, the reason behind the motivation, and the goal which cannot be negotiated away for fear of divine judgment, our goal of an Iran without nuclear weapons and a potential regime change to a secular and more Western-friendly government, will never be achieved.

America’s enemies do not share our view of morality, freedom and democracy. They are not coy about this but state their opposing views outwardly and regularly. Our mistake has been not to take them seriously, even when they demonstrate their resolve in the murder of their own people and other kinds of oppression.

This failure to understand the enemy can only mean we will eventually be on the losing side of any and all “negotiations.”

As Ettinger writes: “Western democracies tend to rely heavily on diplomacy and negotiation with the Ayatollah regime, which has demonstrated its mastery in the art of the Quran-sanctioned Taqiyya (dissimulation). Moreover, since 1979, the Ayatollah regime has leveraged diplomacy/negotiation as a robust tailwind for its anti-US conduct in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East at-large, Africa, Latin America and on US soil.”

Ettinger gets it. Apparently, we do not.

========

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I've Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America" (HumanixBooks).

©2026 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.