On June 18, 1815, the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte said to his troops: “I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad troops, and this affair will be over by breakfast.” By that evening, Napoleon’s troops were fleeing in defeat, and less than a month later, Napoleon himself surrendered to British custody on the deck of the HMS Bellerophon. He would never again know a day of freedom. For all of Napoleon’s flaws, a lack of confidence was never one of them.
In a Truth Social post at 3 a.m. on January 2, 2026, as protesters gathered in the streets of Tehran to demand regime-change, a supremely confident President Trump made this remarkable boast to the Iranian people: “If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters … the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Iran did indeed kill peaceful protesters—some 30,000 of them—and within two months, Mr. Trump had assembled off the coast of Iran the greatest armada the world has known. Then, on February 28, 2026, the first day of the current war, and while still basking in the adulation of the world for the brilliant operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, a triumphant President Trump gave this message to our enemies in Iran in a televised nationwide address:
To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity. Or in the alternative, face certain death. So, lay down your arms. You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death.
In the same speech, Trump made this invitation to the long-suffering people of Iran:
America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass . . . When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.
For all of Mr. Trump’s flaws, a lack of confidence has never been one of them. His above-quoted remarks were the original “deal” on offer to the Iranian regime: surrender or die. Nothing says “regime change” like telling the regime, “lay down your weapons” or face certain death, and telling its people, “when we are finished, take over your government.” Yet for reasons no one in the Trump administration has seen fit to explain, that objective had changed within the first three days of fighting.
In a press conference on March 2, 2026, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told his audience, “This is not a so-called regime-change war.” Oh, really?
Remarkably, Mr. Hegseth failed to acknowledge the unsubtle contrast between his statement and those of the commander-in-chief. Yet that clear shift in objectives had already, by the third day of hostilities, put America on a path to seek some sort of bargain with the regime we once threatened with oblivion and thereby wildly aggrandize their image, power, and authority in the region.
Like Napoleon at Waterloo, President Trump has been overtaken by events. What once seemed so certain and simple has quickly devolved into an embarrassing morass of chronic pleading with the very murderous lunatics we once threatened with certain death to give us a “deal.” We need hardly wait to see the terms to detect the whiff of failure. Any deal with the regime will, by definition, leave them very much alive, firmly in power, and most assuredly free to continue to “shoot and violently kill” the hapless protesters who dared take Mr. Trump at his word.
This sleight of hand by the Trump administration will not go unnoticed by historians, in the long term, or by Democrats, in the near term. It is deeply concerning that it would even be attempted. Indeed, I would say it marks a turning point in Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Mr. Trump burst onto the national scene as a truth-teller, and so he has been until now. Those who oppose his policies will never fail to point out that he speaks in superlatives that often exaggerate his accomplishments, but it is his unfailing fealty to his policies that most infuriates them. He ran on closing the border, lowering the tax and regulatory burden, ending the scourges of transgenderism and DEI, restoring the balance of trade, strengthening the military, and returning manufacturing to the heartland, among other promises, and so he has governed. Now, for the first time, Mr. Trump has been caught saying one thing and doing another in a matter of lasting and historic importance, and the Democrats will not fail to turn this event to their advantage. For the first time, his exile on the island of St. Helena seems faintly in view.
As I wrote recently in these pages, there is no such thing as a deal with Iran. Yet, for reasons Mr. Trump wrongly supposes he need not explain, he has decided to throw the Iranian regime he once threatened with certain death a lifeline, instead, and thereby effectively withdraw his invitation to the Iranian people to take over their government. He is not negotiating with Reza Pahlavi or some other representative of the oppressed people of Iran. He is negotiating a “deal” with the same lying, murderous terrorists who brought us to the present crisis and on whose continued tyrannous authority such a deal will necessarily depend.
All we hear about today is the solemn pledge that Iran “will never have a nuclear weapon.” Yet, the present mishegoss in Iran did not begin with an urgent report that the mullahs had miraculously reconstituted their nuclear program just a short six-months after Karoline Leavitt told the world that we had “obliterated” it. On the contrary, the line coming out of the White House for those six months was that we had blown Iran’s nuclear “program”—not merely a collection of sites or centrifuges—to smithereens. That changed with Mr. Trump’s 3 a.m. tweet on January 2, 2026, promising rescue to the Iranian protesters.
If there is some explanation as to why war was urgently needed to destroy a nuclear program that took twenty years to build and that we only lately were told we had “obliterated,” or why we are now throwing a lifeline to the very murderous lunatics we threatened with certain death, Mr. Trump has not seen fit to give it to us. The American people deserve far better.
A deal with Iran would be no one’s definition of an American victory. It certainly won’t be a victory for the thousands of Iranians who dared trust Mr. Trump’s promise and whose heads will surely roll as soon as the American armada has withdrawn.
Michael Hurley is a retired trial attorney and the author of several books.
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