Trump Pressuring Iran Is Far More Important than “Taking Over” Gaza

President Trump’s announcement on Tuesday that the U.S. will take over Gaza had the shock value of the trade that brought Luka Doncic to my beloved Lakers. For days, that’s all the NBA ecosystem could talk about.

Similarly, the notion of Trump possibly developing oceanfront property in Gaza has sucked up all the media oxygen. This has all the elements of a media firestorm that will be with us for awhile.

First, it breaks the highly sensitive taboo of “transferring” a population in a region where that very notion is supercharged.

Second, it has just enough logic to keep the story going. Gaza right now is neither livable nor safe. The Strip has turned into infested rubble littered with random explosives. Trump would like neighboring countries to take the Gazans under their wing while the Strip is rebuilt. There’s a humanitarian logic to that.

Third, for all its innovation and humanitarian impulse, the idea raises a boatload of questions that will keep pundits and officials busy for weeks. What happens to Hamas? What happens to the hostages? To the ceasefire? How will Israel’s hard right react given that they dream of resettling Gaza?

Who will pay for this Gaza Riviera? Who will supervise the plans? Who will live there? Will the Palestinians who moved away be able to return, and if so, where will they live?

If the U.S. will run the show, what will be Israel’s role? Who will run the Strip after it’s rebuilt? How will that leadership be determined?

More urgently, what if the neighbors don’t want to take the Gazans, or the Gazans themselves don’t want to move? And is the whole thing even legal?

Those are just a few obvious questions off the top of my head.

“The idea was breathtaking in its audacity,” is how Jonathan Lemire described it in The Atlantic, “and it would be fair to say that its implementation would run into myriad obstacles at home and abroad, except that the overwhelming likelihood is that the U.S. would never come near implementing this notion.”

The point is, the “U.S. taking over Gaza” is one of those fantasies that will hijack many news cycles but will be lucky to get to first base.

Trump’s order on Iran, however, is a home run that can happen immediately.

The plan is not just simple but doable: Apply “maximum pressure” on the world’s #1 sponsor of terror that will drive its oil exports down to zero. Iran can’t do anything without that oil money. The Biden administration went soft on them, hoping it could convince the mullahs to sign a nuclear deal. That never happened, and neither did the sanctions. We ended up with a lose-lose: no nuclear deal and a terror regime full of cash that continued to wreak havoc.

Israel’s recent military victories have severely weakened both Iran and its terror proxies. The regime is now vulnerable. The key question is: What should Trump do if the maximum pressure campaign leads the regime to say it’s ready to make a nuclear deal?

My suggestion: don’t trust them. When you negotiate with a regime that considers lying and cheating its official policy, there’s no such thing as a “good deal.” Better to keep the maximum pressure on to encourage opposition forces to topple the regime.

Terms like “regime change” are not usually spoken in polite company. They sound too clandestine. That’s why we shouldn’t expect it to be official policy.

But we know that’s what the Iranian people want and need. They’ve suffered under a brutal regime for many long decades. Any regime that jails its women because they don’t wear their religious head garb properly deserves neither respect nor power.

Trump’s comment on Wednesday that “I want Iran to be a great and successful Country, but one that cannot have a Nuclear Weapon,” was short-sighted. The evil of Iran goes way beyond its nuclear program.

For too long, we got suckered into seeing Iran’s nuclear ambitions as our only problem with the despotic theocracy, which the mullahs have exploited to manipulate us. This focus on the bomb while neglecting mass oppression is an insult to the Iranian people.

Yes, we must deal with Iran’s nuclear threat. Apparently, now that it feels cornered, Iran is reportedly racing to develop a “crude” nuclear weapon. Military action is the surest way to disable it. But that is no reason to stop there. Morally, we should feel obligated to continue weakening the regime and empowering its opposition.

Iran doesn’t need a nuclear weapon to jail, oppress and brutalize its people. The Iranian people need to know that our interest is also to help liberate them.

Trump’s announcement of maximum pressure on Iran may have gotten smothered by his bombshell announcement on Gaza, but it deserves our maximum attention.

In this case, taking down an evil regime that is a threat to the world, in a country where no one needs to move, is a lot more valuable than trying to move a whole population that may not even want to move.

The only thing that will move in Iran are the hearts of a people crying for its freedom.