Going into the negotiations this past weekend everyone said the Islamists ostensibly in charge in Iran only had two negotiating levers – their pile of nuclear junk, unusable at the moment but dangerous to leave them with, and the Strait of Hormuz.  Everyone was wrong; they had a third – the general populace of Iran.  Further large scale military action no longer threatens the mullahs and their military and secret police, it threatens the people of Iran, making any such large scale military action highly problematic.  In essence the mullahs, et.al. are holding the people of Iran hostage.  Hostage taking is an act of terrorism, not war.  Thus this is no longer a war, this is an anti-terrorist action.  That changes many things.

The Islamic Republic of Iran began with taking the American Embassy staff hostage and it is now taking the entire populace of its own nation hostage.   Everyone in America knew, by the end of the embassy hostage crisis, that America does not negotiate with terrorists.  This past weekend should bring that rule of conduct back into play.  There are no further negotiations with the mullahs, even the “low level substitutes of the JV” as the host put it.  They do not represent their nation.  The popular demonstrations that kicked all this off showed that to be the case.  To grant them the status of national leadership is to give them more credit than they deserve.

From a military standpoint that complicates matters.  We now have to figure out how to deal with the hostages.  Ideally, the hostages would help us defeat the hostage takers.  But apparently, they are not up to it.  I certainly do not have access to enough intelligence to know why, but I am certain that the slaughter of over 40,000 of the hostages by the hostage takers has something to do with it.  And it is not just a matter of not wanting more death – it is a matter of not being able to organize or arm themselves to resist.  That murderous rampage by the regime made it plain that massive protest alone was insufficient to the task.

The movie “Speed,” with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, offers an interesting take on this situation.  Early in the film two LAPD bomb squad officers discuss how to handle a hostage situation and Reeves character says, “Shoot the hostage, take her out of the equation.”  The other officer accuses him of being nuts.  But then later in the film, the other officer is, in fact, taken hostage and the Reeves character does precisely that, wounding his partner so he can take down the bad guy.  It saved his partner’s life, even if the bad guy got away to be dealt with another day.

Then, of course, there is the “Kobayashi Maru” test of Star Trek fame – wherein James T. Kirk is the only man able to beat the unbeatable scenario – a feat he accomplishes by reprogramming the computer that runs the simulation, “changing the conditions of the test.”  This results in a legendary debate about whether Kirk cheated or not.

Trump’s current efforts to blockade the Straits of Hormuz is an effort to change the conditions of the situation – taking one of their negotiation levers off the table.  The problem is he is still thinking in terms of negotiating with terrorists.  Trump wants to do a deal in a situation where there is no possible deal.  America does not negotiate with terrorists.

What choice are we left with but to “shoot the hostage?”  If we are honest this has been a hostage taking from the beginning in the 1970’s and the world has left it alone because no one was willing to be mean enough to shoot the hostage.  And so we have left the people of Iran to suffer under this regime and the rest of the world to “enjoy” its numerous and heinous terrorist actions.

The host has asked since early on in this affair what people thought the American tolerance of casualties was.  At the moment it seems American casualties are not the issue – Iranian ones are.  Given the protests so murderously squelched by the mullahs, I have to think the Iranian populace would be willing to bear a lot to finally throw off the mullahs.  I think they know that any wound we might inflict upon them would be for their freedom and they would respond with gratitude.

This truly is a test of leadership – making decisions when there are no good decisions to be made, only bad ones.

I, for one, would choose freedom for the populace of Iran held hostage these many years.