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Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-892974
The Stakes of Iran Diplomacy: Enrichment, Ballistic Missiles, and Hormuz
(Jerusalem Post) Aviram Bellaishe - Washington is applying military and economic pressure to compel Iran toward a deal, but without pursuing actual regime change. That is also the stated position of the White House: deny Iran nuclear weapons, degrade its ballistic missile infrastructure, strike its naval forces, and sever its support for proxy networks, but do not topple the regime. Iran, for its part, is not seeking a deal. It is seeking to stop the assault without any real loss of its core capabilities. From Tehran's perspective, walking away from a negotiation is a tactic, because Iran understands that Washington has no appetite for a sustained military campaign without a clear political objective of actual regime change. Tehran is therefore trying to force Washington into an impossible choice: either a war with no political endpoint, or a deal that contains no Iranian surrender. Negotiation is not an alternative to war. It is one of war's theaters. Iran shifts the battle into the negotiating room because that is where it holds a relative advantage. It can delay, buy time, fragment the opposing side, relieve external pressure, and keep the argument focused on language and formulas rather than on actual capabilities. This is the foundation of its strategic deception. What matters is not the declared intentions across the table, but what Iran retains while the world is talking. As long as Tehran holds the principle of enrichment, the technical knowledge, the physical infrastructure, ballistic reconstitution capacity, active proxy networks, and maritime pressure levers, what is happening is not threat dismantlement. It is threat management. There is no genuine diplomatic solution that would compel Iran to stop rebuilding its missile arsenal or halt its drive back toward nuclear capability. Any American concession on the question of the Strait of Hormuz, or any form of functional Iranian control over commercial shipping, would constitute an unambiguous Iranian victory and a strategic situation worse than the one that existed before hostilities began. Hormuz is therefore the only card Iran can convert into an unambiguous public victory, and the one place where Washington absolutely cannot afford to yield. If the genuine objective is to eliminate the Iranian threat, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, proxy networks, and maritime coercion, there is no real diplomatic solution. If the U.S. is unwilling to pursue actual regime change, there are only solutions that manage the threat, suspend it, or defer it. The writer, vice president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, served in senior government positions for 27 years.