When we need to go to war

There are times when a deal isn't the answer

Feb 06, 2026

After the Great War, England had no appetite for another one. Neville Chamberlain was a great prime minister; the king found him a close friend and a reliable partner in leading the people. Winston Churchill, on the other hand, was a firebrand, a self-promoter, and a war hawk. Looking at history from the eye of the people who lived it, England didn’t have to fight. Hitler was more than happy to reach a deal with London, if England would stay out of his war. But it was Chamberlain who, on September 3, 1939, announced to the country that England was at war with Germany, after the Nazis invaded Poland. After Dunkirk, Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, pressured the government to seek peace with the Nazis, while Churchill pushed for war. England could have sat it out, but both Churchill and Chamberlain knew that was a fool’s move.

England didn’t have to fight the Nazis, as Hitler was ready to negotiate, but they needed to fight, because Hitler was not going to stop his war. In America, there was also a strong isolationist bent to stay out of Europe’s wars. President Franklin Roosevelt bucked the political winds in his lend-lease program, which in reality was preparing the country for a war production footing. America didn’t have to fight—Germany was fine leaving us out of it, if we weren’t shipping thousands of trucks to the Soviet Union, and supplying England with weapons, aircraft, and pilots. But America needed to go to war, at least economically, against the hyper-nationalists and militarists in both Germany and Japan.

FDR knew that eventually, events would draw us into the war with Germany. We needed to be ready to fight. This is one thing both Churchill and FDR (who disagreed on a great many things) agreed on. Even if it meant making the Soviet Union, a totalitarian communist country with no love for the free west, an ally, the U.S. and England needed to fight. Stalin found out the hard way that Hitler didn’t keep his agreements. Actually, Stalin knew Hitler didn’t keep his agreements, but thought that surely Germany wouldn’t break the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact so quickly. Thus, the Allies had common cause, a need to go to war.

Ayatollah Ali Khameini breaks his agreements. Iran, after signing the JCPOA, pursued a nuclear weapon. They broke their agreement, because they never intended to keep it. Iran also funds terrorists around the world, including those who kill Americans. Iran’s proxies in the Middle East were designed to surround and smother Israel, eventually overrunning the IDF. Israel, for its part, maintained (and still does) a robust intelligence network penetrating Iran to its highest levels, and now we know they also had various deeply planted operations to hobble Hezbollah as well. Israel knew Iran for what it is.

There is now no better opportunity, and no greater need, to go to war against the butchers of Ali Khameini’s regime. When the Iranian people overthrew the Shah, it was because the Shah had used his secret police and the military to suppress freedoms. They welcomed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who lived in exile as a victim of the Shah’s oppression. Khomeini promised freedom from the Shah, but over 40 years he delivered an even worse oppression. Now the people of Iran, who are not Arab, but Persian, and not Islamic by history, but a rich, pluralistic society with technology, art, and education at its heart, want to yet again throw off oppression. The response of the regime, as it has been for decades, is to murder tens of thousands of its own people.

But now, without its proxies to threaten Israel (Hezbollah still exists but is no longer as great a threat; Gaza has largely been destroyed, and the Houthis have been suppressed), and without a near hope for a nuclear shield, Khameini and his regime are vulnerable. Given time, it’s possible that the people of Iran will overthrow the regime on their own. But the cost will be tremendous, and the outcome is far from certain.

President Donald Trump has explicitly promised the people of Iran that America is coming “to their rescue.” He has assembled a fleet so great off the coast of Iran that it dwarfs the entire air forces and navies of all the countries in the region, combined. This is not a matter of “a big stick.” We have struck Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, and we know their capabilities. Yet we continue to sit and negotiate with the regime.

Ali Khameini would love to negotiate with Trump’s administration. He will make a big show of Iran’s sovereignty and its right to have an economy (which is now wrecked by our sanctions and by its short, but disastrous missile war with Israel). He will agree not to pursue nuclear weapons. He will eventually back down on the issue of missile development and inventory. The Iranian regime is happy to work out a deal with Trump and Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

There are some in America who like to murder history, like Darryl Cooper, who was given a platform by Tucker Carlson, a known stooge of the Iranian regime and the Russians. Cooper claimed that Churchill, not Hitler, was the “chief villain” of World War II, because it was Churchill who forced all of Europe into war. I don’t have time or room here to go into all the reasons why this is gonzo stupid and wrong. But the main reason is that Hitler didn’t keep his agreements, and it was Chamberlain, who signed the Munich Agreement in the presence of Hitler himself, who realized war was necessary.

There are some in America who agree with people like Cooper and Carlson, who think we should owe nothing to the world except forcing Iran to accept a deal. They are wrong, just like Lord Halifax was wrong in 1940. America doesn’t have to fight Iran. We need to fight the regime and end its rule in Tehran.

I know some who read this are saying it’s going to happen, and Hallelujah I hope it does, and soon. Some say that the negotiations are merely cover for the military operation’s planning. Some say that Trump is keeping his options open, and will attack when it’s most favorable. I call bull on that. Trump is not a military planner. If he is down in those details, we’re doing it wrong. I think we can go whenever we want.

Also, every day we hold, hundreds of Iranians are dying. We told them we’re coming, and we’ve not come to their rescue. It is through our inaction that they are being arrested, executed, and that people in the streets are mercilessly mowed down by heavy machine guns and sniper fire.

We don’t have to come. We can break our word. Trump’s words do not have the effect of a treaty, so we are not bound to support the Iranians. At least in WWII, Chamberlain had an agreement to defend Poland which forced the government to declare war on Germany. Iran hasn’t done anything to force us to declare war. The U.S. doesn’t declare war anymore, anyway (how quaint). Of course, we can bring the representatives of Ali Khameini to the table and sign a deal, then walk away.

Two things are likely, but not certain—well, one is certain. Khameini will break any deal he signs with us. He might wait until Trump is out of office to do it, but he will break the deal. The other thing is that the people of Iran might overthrow Khameini anyway. And if they do, after we signed a deal with their oppressors, how much will they hate us then? They chanted “death to America!” because we admitted the Shah (Jimmy Carter shocked every single adviser who told him not to do it) for cancer treatment. If we walk away this time, generations of Iranians will shout “death to America!” again because we betrayed them over and over.

If we walk away with a deal, and not war, we are monsters. Just like Chamberlain and Churchill, and the people of England knew that they’d be monsters if they sat out WWII and left the continent under the boot of Hitler. Churchill said they’d be nothing more than a “client state” of Germany. If the U.S. does a deal with Iran, what does that make us? A client state of Tehran, I guess. Tucker Carlson, a regular visitor to the West Wing, would win. The regime in Iran would survive to break deals and kill more people. Israel would have to fend for itself. We’d be monsters.

There are times when a deal is not the answer. There are times when we don’t have to fight, but we need to fight. This is one of those times.

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