Opinion: Erfan Fard Warns Trump Not to Let Iran Turn Military Defeat Into a Diplomatic Win
A counterterrorism analyst argues Tehran is dragging out talks to hurt Trump before the Nov. 3 midterms and says any deal needs enforceable monitoring and no sanctions relief up front.
This is a summary of an opinion column. The views belong to Erfan Fard, a Washington-based counterterrorism analyst, not to RightNewsRightNow.
The argument. Fard writes that great powers in Middle Eastern wars often win on the battlefield and then lose ground at the table. He says Trump faces that risk after eight months of war with Iran. In his view, Tehran has taken heavy military and economic losses but is still trying to survive through nuclear threats, pressure on energy supplies and slow-walked talks.
The evidence he cites. He points to Oct. 20, when, he says, Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told Pakistan's army chief that "not a single gram" of enriched uranium would leave Iran, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tied reopening the Strait of Hormuz to Iran's own plan. He says the IRGC claimed, without evidence, that Iranian mines stopped three tankers.
The political angle. Fard claims Iran is deliberately stalling to weaken Trump before the midterms by leaning on war fatigue, voter worry and high energy prices.
What he wants. Success, he writes, should not be defined only as the missiles stopping or the Strait temporarily reopening. He calls for explicit nuclear commitments, enforceable independent monitoring, credible verification, maritime security guarantees and clear consequences for violations, and says sanctions relief and frozen funds should not be released in advance. He also urges Washington not to treat the survival of the Islamic Republic as the same thing as stability in Iran, and says the Iranian people want regime change.
Note for readers: these are the author's claims and predictions, and we have not verified them. Fard also links Iran and Russia to unrest in France and mentions two arrests in Britain over alleged intelligence cooperation with Iran. Fox's column gives no source for those links in the passages we reviewed. See our earlier opinion summary of Larry Kudlow's column on Iran for a related view.