To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.—William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Nothin’ like a good existential crisis, eh? Because if you remember your high school English teacher (or used Cliff’s Notes; I’m not here to judge), Hamlet was asking whether it’s better to live or die.
“To be, or not to be.”
Which is the exact same question President Donald Trump wants Iran to consider: Make a deal and surrender your nuclear ambitions, “you crazy bastards,” or I’ll shoot you in the frickin’ head.
The trouble is that Iran isn’t taking Trump seriously. For many reasons — most notably, self-preservation — the mullahs are incentivized to stall, drag their feet, and negotiate in bad faith because it accomplishes three things:
- Communicates to the Iranian people that the regime is still strong and powerful. (Capitulating too quickly would communicate the opposite, risking rebellion.)
- Increases the economic pain points in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. (The longer the conflict, the greater the financial chaos — and thus the political cost to Trump.)
- With global sentiment/polls strongly opposing Israel and America, Iran’s negotiating position will grow stronger over time. (So the longer they wait, the more they’ll gain.)
This led to Iran seizing the Strait of Hormuz and blockading access. Which then led to Trump blockading their blockade with a blockade of his own. It’s a blockade of a blockade!
We’ve gone from 4D chess to 4D blockades.
Will it work?
The New York Post says yes: “Trump Brilliantly Calls Iran’s Bluff — With His Own Strait of Hormuz Blockade”
Whoever’s calling the shots in Iran wasted yet another chance for peace over the weekend, and now President Donald Trump will again call Tehran’s bluff.
Iran’s negotiators refused to satisfy America’s demands Saturday in talks in Pakistan, as regime leaders bet that playing the Strait of Hormuz card would get Trump to blink.
Instead, he played it right back at them — announcing his own blockade, so that Iran’s oil exports (which had continued despite the war) will also be blocked.
[…]
They assumed America would be help captive by conventional wisdom; our president proved them wrong.
Trump once again tried to reach a peaceful settlement; the Iranians again refused: Now they’ll pay yet a higher price for thinking they could get him to chicken out.
Bloomberg says no: “The Hormuz Blockade Is a Throwdown the U.S. Can’t Win”
For a man who understands the power of leverage, Donald Trump is being remarkably slow to recognize the influence Iran has gained in the Strait of Hormuz. The US president’s threat to complete its closure by blocking Iranian exports through it, too, is far more likely to drag him deeper into a politically damaging war than to force Tehran’s capitulation.
[…]
[T]he president will at some point have to recognize some hard truths: He has not won yet, he does not have a clear military path to doing so and neither he, nor the global economy, can afford to keep Hormuz closed.
[…]
For now the unfortunate reality is that the regime has “the whip hand,” as the former head of Britain’s MI6 Alex Younger put it last month. That isn’t because it is stronger than its enemies, but because it knows it can block Hormuz and is more willing to inflict the resulting economic pain on its own people than is Trump or other nations around the globe.
The US administration needs to recognize it cannot hope to get a quick win in these circumstances, even if it blockades all trade with Iran through Hormuz.
Question for the readers: Which outlet is right and which one is wrong?
Answer from the writer: Yes.
The New York Post is correct: Trump’s blockade of a blockade deprives Iran of profiting from ransom payments and/or selling any oil, thus increasing its economic suffering. It weakens one of the mullah’s biggest bargaining chips.
If you assume that Iran is negotiating in good faith, weakening the mullahs’ bargaining position makes tactical sense.
But Bloomberg is also correct: It’s extraordinarily unlikely that Trump can blockade his way to victory, especially in the short term. More likely than not, the blockade would have to last months — if not years — to bear fruit, and for a candidate who ran on the platform of “no more forever wars,” that’s not an attractive option.
Besides, the economic pain will be shouldered unevenly, with the nations that actually care about the welfare of their people screaming far louder than the mullahs. Iran doesn’t mind suffering — as long as everyone else suffers, too.
If you assume that Iran is negotiating in bad faith, a blockade of a blockade is an incremental tit-for-tat escalation that increases everyone’s pain points without bringing us any closer to a real solution.
In other words, it’s a waste of time.
Perhaps a smarter strategy is to hit the mullahs with a threat they dread far more than a blockade. I’m talking about the two words that have horrified Americans since the Iraq War of the early 2000s: regime change.
But not Iraqi-style regime change, where we plant U.S. soldiers overseas and try to build a new government from the ground up in a foreign land. That’s regime building, not regime change.
I simply mean smashing the current regime.
Under President George W. Bush, American foreign policy operated under the “Pottery Barn rule,” which meant, as Secretary of State Colin Powell explained, “If you break it, you own it.”
I just laid it out for [President Bush]. I said: “Mr. President, it isn’t just a simple matter of going to Baghdad. I know how to do that. What happens after? You need to understand, if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.”
But why? What prevents us from breaking it and simply walking away?
What’s wrong with regime change WITHOUT regime building?
I suppose the counterargument is something along the lines of “the devil you know versus the devil you don’t,” but that assumes the old regime would be replaced by something even worse. That’s probably a stupid assumption: There are over 200 countries on the planet, yet Iran is the #1 sponsor of international terrorism. Has been for generations.
It’s a uniquely evil regime.
Why would we assume Iran 2: Electric Boogaloo would be more of a threat than Iran 1? Murphy’s Law isn’t an absolute; sometimes, things get better. (Really!)
After all, the Colin Powell-George W. Bush “Pottery Barn model” relied on assumptions, too — namely, that a Western-style democratic government would succeed in Iraq, and if we stayed around and helped, we’d be rewarded with Iraqi loyalty. That assumption turned out to be spectacularly misguided.
Besides, Iran’s mullahs are MUCH more terrified of a popular uprising than a naval blockade. If we’re trying to pressure the mullahs into capitulating, doesn’t it make sense to hit ‘em where they’re the most vulnerable?
It’s time for the Trump administration to grease the wheels for regime change.
In fact, I’d borrow a page from the Iranian playbook: For years, the mullahs played a cat-and-mouse game with nuclear weapons, avoiding the outright development of nukes, yet keeping the A-bomb within reach. This way, the mullahs reasoned, the U.S. couldn’t use Iranian nuclear weapons as a pretext for war — but they could still extort the West (and threaten its neighbors) by keeping nukes within reach.
It was a smart strategy, winning Iran billions of dollars in concessions from the Obama administration.
Democrats, leftists, and the Woke Right often point to Benjamin Netanyahu’s long history of claiming that Iran is only a few months away from developing nuclear weapons to discredit the Iranian threat entirely, painting Bibi as the boy who cried wolf:
“He’s been LYING every time…”@MegynKelly and @TuckerCarlson look back at all the times Netanyahu has warned Iran is about to have a nuclear bomb… for years… and what might be happening now between Trump and Israel.
FULL: https://t.co/UMwU9naoMX pic.twitter.com/HWy2Mz8mOv
— The Megyn Kelly Show (@MegynKellyShow) February 27, 2026
But Netanyahu was telling the truth: Iran’s national strategy was to keep nuclear technology perpetually within reach. And then, when the timing was right, it’d be able to quickly build its nuclear arsenal.
We should follow the same strategy with regime change.
Remember what Trump told the Iranian people when the war began:
Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.
For many years, you have asked for America’s help. But you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see how you respond. 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.
Well, with the two-week ceasefire, bombs are no longer dropping everywhere. There’s still about ten days to go. And the U.S. Armed Forces are close enough by to prevent Iranian protesters from getting wiped out by Iranian airpower — the fate that befell the brave Iraqis who rebelled against Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War.
With U.S. drones, planes, and air support, let’s give the Iranian people the cover they need to rise up against the mullahs.
If the Iranians are negotiating in good faith, this will pressure them to stop dragging their feet, because the more they delay, the bigger the rebellion grows. (Especially with the U.S. preventing the regime from fighting back.) It dramatically escalates the pain points on the mullahs, giving U.S. negotiators the upper hand.
If the rebels are winning, we can sit tight and let ‘em overthrow the regime on their own. And if they’re not outright winning but still causing a lot of problems, the threat of continued U.S. support would become our most valuable bargaining chip.
On the other hand, if the Iranians are negotiating in bad faith, none of these negotiations will matter anyway, because Iran will never agree to anything real. If that’s the case — and come hell or high water, the mullahs are 100% determined to acquire nukes — regime change is our only option.
So we might as well get the ball rolling sooner rather than later.
Regime change — without regime building — is our best move. And [checks watch] there’s no time like the present.
One Last Thing: 2026 is a critical year for America First. It began with Mayor Mamdani declaring war on “rugged individualism” and will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.
Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.
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