Is this the first, big step toward ending the Iran war?
Last week, before he joined the Israeli air offensive against Iran's nuclear program, U.S. President Donald Trump posted this on social media: 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!' That was apparently his proposal for Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Unconditional surrender is a dangerous thing to demand. It's the international relations equivalent of Michael Corleone in The Godfather: 'My offer is this: nothing.'
Two and a half millennia ago, the Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu described nine types of ground on which conflict can take place. The last of these he called 'desperate ground' or 'death ground.' Death ground is where, if you lose, 'there is no chance of survival.'
In The Art of War, read to this day in military academies and strategic studies programs, Sun Tzu counselled generals to do something paradoxical: Always seek to put their own side on death ground. Put your forces in a place where retreat is not an option and escape is not possible, and thus their only hope for survival is to fight harder than ever.
'For it is the nature of soldiers to resist when surrounded,' he wrote. 'Throw the troops into a position from which there is no escape and even when faced with death they will not flee.'
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But Sun Tzu's advice has a flip side: Don't put your enemy on death ground. Offer him a way out – a path to retreat, to concede, and to survive.
The Trump administration must be careful not to put the Islamic Republic of Iran on death ground, unless it wishes a wider and longer war. Attacking its nuclear program is one thing; demanding regime change is another. To the extent that this conflict is only about ending the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons, not ending the regime, it may be possible for Mr. Khamenei to accept an outcome that allows him to save at least some face, and save his rule, while giving in on the substance of American demands.
Iran's military-theocratic dictatorship is homicidal, but not suicidal. For all its otherworldly rhetoric about eternal judgment on the spiritual plane, it has always shown itself primarily interested in its physical existence down here on the material plane.
Mr. Trump has a habit of wandering off message in late night Truth Social postings, but the administration's strategy, if it can stick to it, appears to involve offering an off-ramp to Mr. Khamenei.
On Sunday, when Vice-President JD Vance was asked if the U.S. was at war with Iran, he replied, 'No, we're not at war with Iran, we're at war with Iran's nuclear program.'
It's a crucial distinction, and one Washington must try to maintain.
'What we said to the Iranians is we do not want war with Iran; we actually want peace. But we want peace in the context of them not having a nuclear weapons program,' Mr. Vance said. 'If they leave American troops out of it and they decide to give up their nuclear weapons program once and for all, then I think ... we can have a good relationship with the Iranians.'
He added that, 'I actually think it provides an opportunity to reset this relationship, reset these negotiations and get us in a place where Iran can decide not to be a threat to its neighbours, not to be a threat to the United States.'
This is, admittedly, rather sunny talk for the day after a military strike. And the thing about war is that, no matter how strong you are, the other side also gets a vote.
And to borrow from the language of late U.S. secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld, Iran's nuclear program still has many known unknowns. We know that we don't know what has happened to the stockpile of enriched uranium. We know that we don't know precisely how damaged by bombing are all of Iran's nuclear facilities. We know that we don't know for certain that it does not have other secret facilities; Israel destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, but a decade later it was discovered that Saddam Hussein had secretly continued to pursue weapons development.
As for Mr. Khamenei's government, it has always insisted the nuclear program is not in any way a weapons program, while devoting extraordinary national resources to it, and tying the regime's prestige to the effort. Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace estimates that the program has cost Tehran around US$500-billion.
Mr. Khamenei will be reluctant to give up on whatever is left of this work. But the 86-year-old – in poor health, in hiding, with many senior advisers now obituaries – is almost certainly even more interested in the survival of his life's work, which is the regime.
On Monday, Iran launched a missile attack on a U.S. base in Qatar. It was apparently more of a PR show than a military move. There were no casualties, and Mr. Trump even thanked Iran for 'giving us early notice' of the strike, assisting in its defeat. Also notable: The price of oil didn't shoot up on Monday. It plunged.
Early on Monday evening, Mr. Trump posted that 'a complete and total CEASEFIRE' had been reached. If true, it would mean that Iran was given an off-ramp from a worse defeat, and took it – allowing a big step back from military escalation and toward diplomatic resolution.
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