Trump must finish the Iran job

Many Israelis have stopped believing that Donald Trump will finish the Iranian nuclear question. I am one of them, and I would like to be proven wrong.

The polls are clear. In June, after the Islamabad memorandum was signed, Channel 12 found that 71 percent of Israelis did not trust the president to protect their interests in a deal with Tehran. 

By July, the Jewish People Policy Institute found that only 7 percent had a great deal of trust in him, down from 34 percent in March, when bombs were falling on Tehran.

What changed was what Israelis saw. A memorandum pushed Iran's roughly 400 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, which the International Atomic Energy Agency has not been able to see since the summer of 2025, into later talks. 

The president called that stockpile unimportant. The regime tore up the memorandum three weeks later by attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz. 

At the end of September, Washington was reported to be offering sanctions relief and frozen funds in exchange for nuclear steps. This month, the vice president asked Iran for a "meaningful reduction" in enrichment, where the demand had once been zero. 

And on October 8, the president said there would be no attack on Iran before the midterm elections on November 3.

What Israelis fear most is not defeat but a deal: one that leaves the enrichment, the uranium, the Revolutionary Guard and the regime in place, and calls it peace. Trump called the 2015 Vienna agreement the worst deal in history. If he signs one now, after the regime was on its knees, it will be worse.

This is not only an Israeli file. It is a Jewish one. The Islamic Republic is the only government that has promised, in public, to erase a state. But the first to pay if Israel is seen as weak are Jews in Paris, London, Sydney and Montreal. We felt it within days after October 7. We would feel it a hundred times over under a nuclear Iran.

Remember what was promised. On February 28, the president said the purpose of the strikes was to end the Islamic Republic, and called on Iranians to rise. 

Ali Khamenei was dead within hours; other senior figures followed. On April 1, he promised to escalate until the regime was sent back to the Stone Age. Then the calendar took over: a ceasefire on April 7, failed talks in Islamabad, a blockade, a memorandum signed at Versailles on June 17 and torn up on July 8, a strike prepared for early August and called off because Tehran asked for more time. 

On August 25, the secretary of state told allies that major combat operations were off the table for now, and American officials let it be known that "for now" meant after the midterms.

Meanwhile, Mojtaba Khamenei, wounded but alive, is supreme leader. Iran told the IAEA in February that normal safeguards were no longer practicable, and the agency says it cannot verify where the uranium is or whether enrichment has stopped. On October 12, Iran's foreign ministry said it wanted to return to the June memorandum, while its security council chief called the latest American proposal insufficient. Tehran has learned that every time it bleeds, Washington pauses, and every pause comes with a new offer.

The February strikes were the boldest American action in the Middle East since 1991. But a surgeon who removes half the tumor and closes the patient up because the family is anxious has not performed half a cure. He has performed a wound.

Finishing the job has three parts. First, a real ultimatum: one date, and conditions that cannot be negotiated down. The enriched uranium leaves the country or ceases to exist, every enrichment site is dismantled under inspection, and the Guard's missile industry stops. The regime will only believe a deadline that has been enforced once.

Second, the facilities, for good: Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan, the new tunnels, the centrifuge workshops and the stockpile, wherever it is hidden. Not degraded; gone, and verified by inspectors rather than by a president's adjective.

Third, the regime's nerve centers: the Guard's command, the Basij, the intelligence ministry, the internet kill switch. Not the power and desalination plants, which Reza Pahlavi rightly asked to spare. No one makes a revolution from the air, as Netanyahu conceded in March, but the regime's ability to crush one can be taken away.

I know the objections: oil prices, American lives (twenty already lost), a region on fire. But the Gulf states hit by Iranian missiles in March asked Washington to keep going. The costs have been paid. Stopping halfway turns them into a down payment on the next war.

I understand the president's position. Gasoline is expensive, his approval is low and November 3 is three weeks away. But an election is temporary, and Iran's centrifuges do not vote. A president who tells his enemy the date before which he will not act has not bought three weeks of calm. He has given Tehran three weeks to plan.

Harry Truman recognized Israel eleven minutes after it declared independence, in an election year every pollster said he would lose. No one remembers the polls. They remember the eleven minutes.

History will not judge this president on gasoline prices in October 2026. It will ask one question: when the Islamic Republic was at its weakest in forty-seven years, did the United States finish, or did it negotiate? 

If he finishes, he will stand with the few leaders since 1945 who changed the direction of history. If November becomes December and the memorandum returns under a new name, the February strikes will be remembered like 1991: a brilliant campaign that stopped short.

If he does this, I will forget every hard thing I have written about him, and so will Israel. 

Talk is cheap. The Jewish people, the Iranian people and history are waiting for the act.