With his decision to bomb Iran again, Donald Trump finally put the nail into arms-control diplomacy with Tehran. Negotiations started in 2002 when an Iranian opposition group revealed the clerical regime's previously clandestine nuclear-weapons program. The French, British, and Germans, fearing that George W. Bush might try to down another member of his "axis of evil," started talking. The Iranians joined. They, too, feared Mr. Bush.
For Tehran, nuclear diplomacy had overwhelmingly been about deterring the U.S. and Israel—and acquiring sanctions relief and the time required to build long-range ballistic missiles, a well-armed proxy empire, and industrial-scale uranium enrichment. They got all of the above through Barack Obama's nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Given Mr. Trump's deal-making reflex and his ideology-lite understanding of men, he may again proffer another meeting to the Islamic Republic's new leaders. With Ali Khamenei's death, the regime may temporarily form a triumvirate to replace him, it may rapidly select a new supreme leader, or it may muddle through with multiple power centers united, first and foremost, in the cause of crushing Iranians who oppose them. But those who follow Khamenei, who all passed his demanding test for loyalty, will unquestionably reject another Trump proposal.
Unlike earlier presidents, who engaged in diplomacy primarily to avoid war or the embarrassment of Iran going nuclear, Mr. Trump has shown he isn't scared of conflict. He may believe that the Venezuela model can apply to Iran, that after Khamenei’s death he can find hard-edged pragmatists who will surrender the nuclear program. It’s a fool’s errand, and Mr. Trump may tire of it quickly. But the president might sustain his anti-Iranian endeavors because he appears to have a longstanding animus against the Islamic Republic, dating from the hostage crisis in 1979.
Unlike Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump doesn’t feel guilty about the American alliance with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He doesn’t relate to the historicist’s patient conviction that an Iranian Thermidor lies ahead. Mr. Trump’s offensive probably wasn’t about foreclosing “an imminent threat.” It certainly wasn’t about Benjamin Netanyahu playing Svengali, getting the president and American power to do what Israel couldn’t.
For Mr. Trump, this campaign was surely in part about restoring national honor after all the years of ignominy, of watching the Islamic Republic kill Americans while Washington did nothing. Mr. Trump’s speeches weave fact and fiction freely, but his war sermon Saturday probably reflects, more or less, his sincere motivations. Critics who see his Iran policy as reckless likely never felt as acutely as the president the shame that came with Iran’s unanswered malevolence. Mr. Trump’s sense of pride and authority—almost Roman in intensity—works when played against the Islamic Republic since it’s been led by men who literally believe they are on a divine mission.
Some in Washington still don’t understand that the 12-day war changed everything. Israel and Iran are and will remain at war—not the indirect assaults of the past, but a direct, probably protracted conflict. An Israeli consensus has developed: The Jewish state will have a continuous need to degrade the clerical regime’s proxies and home defenses, which could shield revitalized nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. Threats no longer have to be imminent to be countered.
Until recently Israelis didn’t care about regime change in the Muslim world, since they had such low regard for the potential for Muslim political evolution. The Islamic Republic’s unrivaled antisemitism married to ballistic missiles, dogged nuclear aspirations and lethal proxies changed Israeli minds. Only the collapse of the Islamic Republic offers the Jewish state relief from this existential struggle.
Mossad now has an Iran regime-change department; it probably has already discovered that killing the Islamic Republic’s leadership is a hell of a lot easier than helping Iranians overcome security services that have shown they are willing to kill thousands to stay in power.
Ali Shamkhani, head of Iran's National Defense Council, was recently asked whether he regrets not developing the bomb in the 1990s, when he was defense minister. "I wish I had," he said. "Today it is evident that Iran should have developed this capability itself." Shamkhani was killed Saturday, and he surely speaks for those left behind.
Whatever hesitancy kept the Iranian elite from crossing the nuclear threshold has evaporated. They understand now that they wouldn't be getting bombed if they had the bomb. The Israelis today may be willing to stand sentry in the Gulf, to "mow the lawn" frequently even inside the Islamic Republic. But they lack the resources to police Iran's far reaches. The regime knows that putting ballistic missiles and a revitalized nuclear program underground works against the Jewish state, which has difficulty in dropping anything bigger than a 5,000-pound bomb.
Without an America committed to mowing the Islamic Republic's lawn, time is on the side of the clerical regime. The great unknown variable is whether its security services will crack when confronted by a future mass uprising. As Mr. Trump intimated in his speech, Iranians will have to do the heavy lifting. If they want their freedom, thousands more are going to die.
Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.