The End of “Kicking the Can”

The End of “Kicking the Can”: Why War with Iran Became Inevitable After Decades of Negligence.
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On September 30, 1985, Shi’ite gunmen abducted four Soviet diplomats in West Beirut. While seven Americans were already hostages in Lebanon, it was the first time pro-Iranian militias had taken Russians hostage. A month later, their captors released three; the Soviets had recovered the body of the fourth from a field just a few days after the kidnapping.

Release by Brute Force

When facing rogue regimes and their proxies, brute force matters more than diplomacy.

To secure the release of their diplomats, the Soviets did not pay a ransom, unlike Presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. Rather, according to press reports at the time, after the first Soviet diplomat was killed, “The KGB then apparently kidnapped and killed a relative of an unnamed leader of the Shias’ Hezbollah (Party of God) group. Parts of the man’s body, the paper said, were then sent to the Hezbollah leader with a warning that he would lose other relatives in a similar fashion if the three remaining Soviet diplomats were not immediately released. They were quickly freed.” It was the last time Hezbollah took any Russian hostage.

Idilic Multicultural Ideology

When facing rogue regimes and their proxies, brute force matters more than diplomacy. Americans pride themselves on being multicultural, but the universities that train the elite and the State Department’s interpretation of multiculturalism are rosy and positive.

In essence, it is about appreciating differences and ordering a mojito at a sushi bar. Political correctness and projection diminish the importance of different people’s ideologies.

Khamenei was never going to forfeit his nuclear program because to do so would mean telling his base that their four-decade, trillion-dollar sacrifice was for naught.

Real estate developers can negotiate with each other because they share frames of reference, a desire to make money, and a sense of the rules of the game; religious zealots are a different matter entirely. Diplomacy does not work unless all parties agree to the same rules of the game.

This is the major reason why diplomacy has failed for decades and across administrations and why the Iranian security forces and their proxies continue to target Americans. The Islamic Republic always looked at diplomacy as an asymmetric warfare strategy with which to tie America’s hands while it pursues its own nuclear aims.

Even reformist politicians admitted as much in their internal debates. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was never going to forfeit his nuclear program because to do so would mean telling his base that their four-decade, trillion-dollar sacrifice was for naught.

Asymmetric Diplomatic Engagement

Under such circumstances, decades of engagement represented strategic negligence. The Islamic Republic waged war against the United States for more than four decades, gleefully demanding “death to America,” taking hostages, and sponsoring terror and proxies.

In effect, every president since Jimmy Carter has kicked the can down the road until, with Iran’s nuclear and ballistic program far advanced, war became inevitable.

They all put political ease above the necessities of leadership and strategic defense. Critics can say war in this moment was unnecessary; that Trump might have waited a month or a year, but that missed the point. With each passing day, the Iranian threat grew. What did not change was their desire to destroy America.

Every president since Jimmy Carter has kicked the can down the road until, with Iran’s nuclear and ballistic program far advanced, war became inevitable.

Had Carter or Reagan acted when Iran first attacked America’s embassies, kidnapped Americans in Beirut, or bombed a U.S Marine peacekeeper contingent, they may have saved hundreds of lives. In 1985, Soviet leaders showed Iranian proxies what happens when they pick a fight with Russians.

The ayatollahs and their terrorists internalized that lesson.

Today, Trump teaches them the same. The elimination of Khamenei and his broader family teaches a lesson long overdue.

Indeed, if there is any Trump doctrine, it should be this: Take a hostage or murder an American for political purposes, and what befalls the Islamic Republic today will replicate. A little deterrence up front can avoid decades of conflict and contentious diplomacy down the line. Such a possession would do more to bring peace and end terror than any previous Trump virtue signaling to lobby for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Published originally on March 3, 2026.

The candle that presents itself as the sun burns out first

Since seizing control of Iran nearly five decades ago, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) built something rare in history, a religious political project that managed to reshape the Middle East. The revolution of 1979 was not merely a change of regime. It was a cultural earthquake. For centuries the Shiites had been a persecuted minority, scattered like dust among mountains and cities, no more than a fifth of the population in the Sunni sea around them. Suddenly a state arose that gave them a name, a face, and a voice. From Tehran came the message: Shiism is no longer a victimized sect swimming under blows. It is a source of power, the beating heart of a global revolution.

For years it seemed that the engine of the revolution was only growing stronger. The revolution extended its arms across the world, South America, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan. Even when parts of it creaked, even when smoke rose from within it, it kept moving. But engines that ignore warning lights do not run forever.

Now the wheels are beginning to jam. A series of colossal mistakes, a misreading of the American administration, an underestimation of the international community, dependence on treacherous patrons, Russia and China, has led the Iranian leadership to the edge of the abyss. What was built over decades as a palace of revolutionary self-confidence now begins to look like a magnificent building whose foundations are slowly sinking into the sand.

And precisely in moments like these, when a player realizes the game is over, true character emerges. The conduct of Iran and its proxies, firing at neighboring states and widening the fronts of war, is not an expression of strength. It resembles a chess player who, in rage, knocks the pieces off the board as checkmate approaches: noise, chaos, and no purpose.

Into these cracks enters the question of succession. The name that arises again and again is Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the Supreme Leader. Yet Mojtaba is not a leader who grew out of the religious tradition. He has no religious law backbone, no aura of a learned cleric, and no real military experience to his credit. If appointed, he will be a chair without legs, a figure who holds the title but is held by the Revolutionary Guards. Not a leader who guides the system, but a puppet the system places on a pedestal.

Alongside him also hovers the shadow of another possible appointment, Ahmad Vahidi, former defense minister, a senior commander in the Guards, and internationally wanted for his involvement in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. His name is a quiet reminder of the character of the security elite that believes it will run the state: people raised in a culture in which violence is not a failure of policy but an operational instrument.

In practice, it has long been clear who runs the country. The Revolutionary Guards are not merely an army; they are an empire. Economically and ideologically, in their view the current campaign is one battle: the battle of Karbala, repeating itself in every generation. The historic battle in which the blood of Husayn ibn Ali was shed has become the lens through which they read reality. Every confrontation is a new chapter in the eternal drama of a faithful minority against a hostile world, and therefore every compromise feels like betrayal.

This logic also explains the pressure placed on Hizbullah. The Revolutionary Guards made it clear to the organization in Lebanon: if you do not join now, the relationship ends. Hizbullah found itself between a rock and a hard place. Refusal would sever it from its patron in Tehran, from money, weapons, and ideology, and its fate as a revolutionary religious organization would be sealed. Yet entering the confrontation could ignite a fire in Lebanon, including among Shiites who no longer burn with the revolution. Hizbullah’s choice effectively sealed its fate.

What exactly is the strategy of the Revolutionary Guards? They believe in a scenario of delayed redemption: it is enough to inflict casualties on the Americans, close the straits, and attack the oil states. Oil prices will jump, and public opinion in the United States will force Trump to end the conflict. Yet here too they may be reading from an old map. Instead of an American withdrawal, the pressure may converge inward and become a tightening ring around the neck of the regime itself.

Another week of confrontation could begin to unravel the seams. Desertions in the regular army, erosion within the Revolutionary Guards, these are no longer theoretical scenarios. Parts of the military may become “lights out”: not rebellion, but simply a presence that fades away.

Into that vacuum the minorities will likely enter: Kurds in the northwest, Baloch in the southeast, Ahwazis and others. When the heart stops sending blood, the limbs begin to move according to their own laws. And if the masses take to the streets, as they already have, again and again, in waves of protest that grew each time, Iran will be swept into a storm with no sovereign.

Thus the revolution of 1979 may reach its final hour. What was built as a fortress will be revealed as a glass palace, impressive from the outside, fragile at a touch.

And then an ancient proverb the Persians knew long before Islam settled in their land will prove true again:

“The candle that presents itself as the sun burns out first.”