Deja Vu All Over Again: The Iran War Is Back On

If you thought the Iran war ended with a handshake and a signature at Versailles last month, I have some bad news: you were living in a fairytale. This week, the shooting started again, the ceasefire collapsed, and the man who signed the deal is now calling the other side “scum” and “cookoo” on camera. Let’s walk through what happened — and what it tells us about who we’re actually dealing with.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED

Over the past several days, Iran attacked commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz — a clear violation of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed on June 17. The U.S. responded with a fresh round of strikes, first on roughly 80 Iranian targets, then on roughly 90 more the following night, aimed at Iran’s ability to threaten shipping through the strait. Iran fired back — drones at Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain, and ballistic missiles at a U.S.-linked base in Jordan. Jordan says it intercepted eight of them. Trump, watching all this unfold from a NATO summit in Ankara, declared the ceasefire “over.”

TRUMP’S STATEMENTS ON IRAN

Three weeks ago, after meeting with representatives of Iran’s post-Khamenei leadership at the G7 summit in France, Trump described them like this:

“They were strong people, smart people… They’re not radicalized and they’re looking to help their country.”

Around the same time, he called them “very rational people” and said they were “nice to deal with.”

This week, at the NATO summit in Turkey, after Iran hit those ships, here’s Trump on the very same regime:

“I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. You know what scum is? They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people... And they’re vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it.”

He added, for good measure, that “there’s something wrong with them, they’re cuckoo.” When a reporter asked what changed his mind, Trump’s answer was basically: I got to know them better.

President Trump showed incredible flexibility to make a deal with the Iranian regime. He’s been saying for weeks that Iran is “dying to make a deal” — and even after calling them scum and cuckoo, on his way home from Ankara, he told reporters Iran “called a little while ago; they want to make a deal so badly.” I’m not quite sure what he means when he says “Iran called,” but they clearly are not desperate to make a deal. The deal they were given was amazing!

• Up to $400 billion in funds for reconstruction,

• the lifting of sanctions, making billions on oil,

• 24 billion dollars’ worth of assets unfrozen,

• and the freedom to continue sponsoring terrorism all over the Middle East … clearly they do not want to deal. They want the West to submit to them.

My point is that while Iran may say they want to deal, what they really want is to continue the conflict.

WHO ACTUALLY NEEDED THE DEAL

Twenty percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the Strait of Hormuz, tucked into that narrow bend of the Persian Gulf near Oman. When Iran shut it down after the February strikes, tanker traffic collapsed to almost nothing, war-risk insurance premiums spiked, and the global economy started bleeding. Every economy on Earth has felt it at the gas pump and in the supply chain.

Trump understands, more than any president in memory, that his words move markets. It’s low-hanging fruit to mock him on late-night TV or on YouTube when he says one thing about the Iranians being great people, and now he’s comparing them to scum. The fact is, he knows that if he can project positivity, it will boost world economies. But in the face of blatant violations, he has no choice but to call them out. And in this deal, the U.S. released frozen Iranian funds and lifted its naval blockade before Iran fully reopened the strait. That actually reveals that it is those of us in the West who are the more desperate party. That doesn’t mean weaker; it means saner. We actually care about what happens in the world. Iran cares only about furthering Islamic ideology.

It’s now been nearly a month since the MOU was signed, and the strait still isn’t running at full pre-war capacity — traffic over the weekend was around 108 crossings total, compared to 120-140 vessels a day before the war. As of this week, it’s effectively closed down again.

Iran never wanted a deal. Iran wanted to humiliate America and Trump. You are not dealing with people who care about their people, their economy, or peace. The men running that regime live very well. The rest of the country does not.

ABOUT THOSE FUNERAL CROWDS

I’ve heard pundits point to the massive crowds at Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral — he was killed in the opening strikes of the war back on February 28 and buried this week after days of processions in Iran and in Karbala, Iraq — and claim it proves the tide has turned in the regime’s favor. “Look at the size of the crowds,” they say.

I’m stunned at how gullible that is.

• First: you’d see similarly enormous crowds at a funeral in North Korea. Nobody believes that means the North Korean people love their dictator.

• Second: Iran has roughly 90 million people. Even a million people in the streets of Tehran or Karbala doesn’t represent the other 89 million who stayed home — or would have left if they could.

• Third: this is a government that, by multiple independent accounts, murdered its own citizens by the thousands — possibly as many as 50,000 — just seven months ago. Whatever the true number, it was a massacre, ordered from the top, aimed at people asking for bread and freedom.

• Fourth: The regime has bussed in mourners and paid for their lodging. You don’t need to do that if your supreme leader is truly beloved.

THIS WEEK: PROVOKING TRUMP AT NATO

Iran timed the ship attacks for exactly the moment Trump was standing among NATO leaders in Ankara — a calculated bet that the alliance wouldn’t rally behind him. That bet paid off, and not because NATO loves Iran. It’s because Trump never built the coalition in the first place. When the war started in February, he didn’t consult NATO before striking. Only a handful of member states — Canada, the Czech Republic, Albania, North Macedonia, Lithuania, and Latvia — publicly backed the operation. Trump has spent months publicly venting that he felt “let down,” telling NATO’s own Secretary General that Europe “wasn’t there for us.” He treats the alliance like it should follow America automatically. That’s not how alliances work, and it was a strategic mistake. If Europe had stood shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. against Iran from day one, this week would look very different, which is why the President should have taken the time to sell the Iran war and build a multinational alliance. Iran knew exactly how isolated Trump was at that summit — and struck at that moment on purpose.

Iran targeted Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar with drones and a U.S.-linked base in Jordan with ballistic missiles. Interestingly, Iran did not touch Israel.

There’s a reason for that. Iran wants Israel on the sidelines. Israel has been able to strike virtually anywhere in Iran it’s wanted to over the last two years. In the skirmishes leading up to this war, Iran’s Russian-supplied air defenses failed repeatedly, and intelligence assets inside the country have repeatedly enabled Israel and the U.S. to snuff out drone retaliation before it launches.

NOW IRAN IS THREATENING ISRAEL

This morning, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council chief said Israel “would not be spared” if its infrastructure is hit again. Israel’s Defense Minister has said the army is ready to strike Iran again “with even greater force.” I hope this is posturing. But we’ve already established these are fanatical religious ideologues running that country — they may genuinely believe their god will hand them victory over “the Zionists.” That’s not a comforting thought.

As an Israeli, I’d prefer we stay on the sidelines of this round. One of America’s real strategic advantages is distance — Iran has no navy capable of crossing the Atlantic or Pacific to reach the U.S. homeland. But Israel is a short flight away, and Iranian ballistic missiles can and do get through, even with Iron Dome and Iron Beam in play. My daughter lives in Tel Aviv. She spent much of the early part of this war sleeping in a bomb shelter. Watching apartment buildings collapse on the news is a very different experience when it’s your own city, your own family.

There are really only three scenarios where I’d want Israel back in this fight:

1.       Credible intelligence that a strike could actually trigger the fall of the regime.

2.       Israel itself is directly attacked.

3.       The U.S. or our Middle Eastern neighbors formally requests our involvement.

Otherwise, I don’t want us jumping in just to jump in.

THE STRAIT WAS A ROYAL FLUSH

Give the regime credit for one thing: closing the Strait of Hormuz was a brilliant tactical move. A country thoroughly beaten on the battlefield turned around and found leverage that cracked the Western alliance and squeezed the global economy — all without winning a single engagement militarily. Iran was cornered and effectively played the only hand it had left—economics.

What the U.S. and Israel should be doing — and maybe are, quietly — is figuring out how to empower the Iranian people, break the regime’s grip, and reopen the strait permanently, without Iran controlling who passes through it.

WHERE THIS LEAVES US

At this point, it should be obvious: Iran is not going to make a deal. When the president says they’re “dying” to make one, it isn’t believable — not because Trump is lying about what he’s hearing, but because Iran has never once, in this entire process, demonstrated that it is trustworthy. Both Obama and Biden were, in my view, badly naïve about the Middle East — remember Obama’s “new beginning” speech in Cairo? Trump has proven naïve, too, in believing he could strike a lasting bargain with a regime like this one. But let me be clear—Trump is not dumb. He is doing what he can to avoid a shutdown of the world’s economy.

Iran was already the most destabilizing force in the region before this war, funding terror through its proxies. Somehow, through sheer leverage over global oil, it comes out of this round stronger than when it started, with a trump card (pun fully intended) in the Strait of Hormuz that it has zero intention of giving up voluntarily. They are banking on the naïveté of the West to keep the charade going.

The regime cannot be trusted, and it needs to fall. The Iranian people need to be armed and supported in bringing that about. I understand the reluctance to commit American troops — believe me, I do. And we should look for another way to bring down the regime.

And let me be clear about something else: I’m not a general, and this isn’t a strategic briefing. I’m just a guy watching the news like everyone else, with two real qualifications: I live in Israel, and I’ve spent decades meeting Iranians in exile as a minister of the gospel. They love Israel; they love the US. They want the regime gone and a real democratic government in its place. And we should be praying for that.

The church in Iran is said to be the fastest growing in the world. Let’s stand with her.

Prayer Points

• Pray for the regime to fall. God is able to bring down a kingdom in an afternoon — He did it with Belshazzar and the writing on the wall in the book of Daniel.

• Pray for wisdom for Trump, Netanyahu, and the leaders of the Western world in this moment.

• Pray for NATO countries to stand — not necessarily in defense of Trump personally, but in defense of the world against the most destabilizing regime on Earth.

• Pray, above all, that the gospel would prosper in Iran and throughout the Middle East.

• Pray for safety over Israel — for supernatural, angelic protection.