It’s Crow, Mr. Trump, Not Lobster

 

It’s Crow, Mr. Trump, Not Lobster

May 26, 2026

 

By Thomas L. Friedman

Only two questions remain regarding the U.S. war with Iran. One, how big a plate of crow will President Trump have to eat to end this conflict with at least some achievements? And two, will he tell us the crow he’s eating is lobster or filet mignon?

Personally, I am fine if Trump has to eat a pile of crow — for instance, the “unconditional surrender” of Iran that he promised will not be coming his way — if it results in Iran relinquishing its roughly 1,000 pounds of near weapons-grade uranium. It would take the immediate threat of an Iranian bomb off the table, and that would be a very good thing.

But please spare me the nonsense that Trump has secured a perfect and delicious deal. Because securing that highly enriched uranium will not only leave the vile, murderous Islamic republic regime in power (and still holding some 10 tons of low-enriched uranium) — but actually strengthen it in troubling ways.

For starters, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will all be remembered as the team that gave the Islamic republic a second lease on life just when it was more on the ropes than ever with its own people.

That’s because the only way Iran will relinquish that near bomb-grade uranium will be as part of a deal that over time lifts the U.S. blockade on Iran’s oil exports and the whole web of U.S. economic sanctions on Tehran. That relief will provide the regime with a huge injection of cash that it will be able to use to buy off — or continue to repress — its opponents at home and to fuel its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

“Trump launched this war of choice with the transformational goal of regime change,” Robert Litwak, an arms control expert and the author of “Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy,” told me. “He is on the verge of ending it through a transactional deal that will be a variant of the agreement Obama negotiated in 2015, and Trump recklessly jettisoned in 2018, that constrained Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

Such a transactional deal leaving the regime in power will be anathema to the pro-Trump hard-liners “who define the threat from Iran as deriving from the character of its regime,” Litwak added.

Because Trump and his national security team did no apparent scenario planning before the war — relying only on promises by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that the Iranian regime would fall like a house of cards after a few weeks of heavy bombing — they failed to anticipate what Iran might do with its back against the wall.

The first was to close the Strait of Hormuz, the vital oil shipping lane through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s crude oil has to pass, a move that sent the price you pay at the pump soaring. With just some drones, cruise missiles and Revolutionary Guards in speedboats firing machine guns, Iran discovered it could put the U.S. economy and many others in a chokehold.

To put it another way, Trump and Netanyahu assumed their multibillion-dollar giant weapons systems could be used to bomb Iran into relinquishing its ingredients for a weapon of mass destruction. Accidentally, though, they enabled Iran to discover it had a weapon of “mass disruption” — cheap drones that could close the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, and forever, Iranians will know that we know that Tehran can shut off the world’s most important oil tap anytime it wants. This new source of leverage for the Iranian regime is priceless.

Trump’s failure to anticipate this is no accident. It is because he thinks he knows everything — when he doesn’t at all.

Remember when Trump and Vance lectured Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office last year, telling him that he had no “cards” and essentially had to submit to the will of Trump’s man-crush Vladimir Putin? Imagine if Trump and Vance had instead been curious and humble and asked Zelensky: “Volodymyr, your ability to resist the Russian superpower has been amazing. What cards have you been able to play to do that?”

Zelensky would have said: “Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance, let me tell you how drones have reshaped the modern battlefield and enabled the small to act big and the weak to act strong.”

Maybe then Trump might have asked Hegseth before he started this war with huge strikes, “Hey, Pete, but what if Iran pulls a Ukraine and just tosses a few $30,000 drones into the Strait of Hormuz and shuts it down? Then what do we do?”

Because Trump apparently never asked that question, and Hegseth was too ignorant or afraid to, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards regime “has achieved the functional equivalent of a nuclear weapon through its ability to strangle the global economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz and to hold hostage the oil and civil infrastructure of the Gulf states,” Litwak said.

What Trump also never asked was: What if Iran responds to U.S. airstrikes by trying to hit the oil infrastructure of America’s Arab Gulf allies, the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain?

That is exactly what Iran did. Among other things, with drone and cruise missile attacks in March, Reuters reported, Iran “knocked out 17 percent of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (L.N.G.) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and Asia.” It added, “The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tons per year of L.N.G. for three to five years.”

Three to five years!

Basically, Iran told America’s vulnerable Arab Gulf oil state allies the geostrategic equivalent of that line from “The Wizard of Oz” — when the Wicked Witch of the West says to the scarecrow made of straw: “How about a little fire, Scarecrow?”

Now you understand why the Arab oil producers absolutely do not want to see Trump restarting the war, and how Tehran is using that as leverage in its negotiations with Washington.

Here’s what else both Iran and our allies can also see. Trump is not a mentally stable person, and therefore he — and his America — cannot be counted on. The latest evidence is a proposal that Trump tossed out over the weekend that was so unhinged it had to have come from someone sitting next to him at the Mar-a-Largo bar.

Trump said in a Truth Social post that in light of “all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together,” he was “mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords.” The list included Turkey, whose leader detests Netanyahu and already has ties with Israel; Pakistan, which has long harbored animosity toward Israel; Jordan and Egypt, which both already have peace treaties with Israel, so why would they need to join the Abraham Accords; and Saudi Arabia, which has made it abundantly clear that the only way it will (or should) normalize relations with Israel is if Israel opens a pathway with Palestinians toward a two-state solution.

Trump even claimed that several allies told him they “would be honored” if Iran itself were to join the accords. If Iran signs “it will be the most important Deal that any of these Great, but always in Conflict Countries, will ever sign,” he wrote. “Nothing in the past, or in the future, will surpass it.”

On what planet of the Milky Way Galaxy would this regime in Tehran, which is practically founded on hatred of Israel, just up and make peace with it after this war?

The whole thing was so ridiculous, juvenile and unvetted by any experts that it had to have left our Israeli and Arab allies deeply worried that their American protector is led by a truly unstable man.

So let me end with what I said the day Trump and Netanyahu started this war: Nothing would improve the future of the Middle East more than if this terrible regime in Tehran were toppled and its nuclear ambitions eliminated.

But to accomplish that you needed to have a very sophisticated plan, and to have thought through all the different scenarios and enlisted as many allies and as much global legitimacy as possible, because this would be hard and would take time. Trump and his clown-car team did none of that.

Yes, they brought immense military force to bear and damaged Iran’s nuclear and conventional military capabilities. Those are very good things. And if Trump can get the near bomb-grade uranium out, that would be an even better thing.

But his supporters shouldn’t fool themselves or our allies: Even if he achieves those things, we will now have to pay for them by giving one of the world’s worst regimes a new lease on life, a permanent stranglehold over critical world oil supplies — and the resources to continue making terrible mischief in the region.

So please don’t tell me this is lobster or filet mignon.

 

Deal or No Deal With Iran

 

Bret Stephens

Deal or No Deal With Iran

May 26, 2026

Credit...Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

By Bret Stephens

It isn’t hard to see the case for striking a deal with Iran, one that will turn the current shaky cease-fire into a long-term truce.

The global economy needs an end to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz lest energy prices rise even higher. The military option for trying to force the strait open is time-consuming and risky. Iran could retaliate by striking important energy and desalination infrastructure in neighboring states, causing an environmental catastrophe. Negotiation is the only plausible way to get Iran to relinquish its stock of highly enriched uranium, most of which is believed to be buried deep within the nuclear complex in Isfahan. The United States is running low on critical munitions, particularly missile interceptors, which are needed to protect U.S. assets and maintain deterrence against other threats worldwide.

And President Trump promised voters a relatively brief “excursion” in Iran, not another forever war in the Middle East. For him to break that pledge now would also mean breaking faith with millions of MAGA voters who long ago grew tired of presidents who seemed to care more about policing the far-flung corners of the world than about taking care of America itself.

Powerful arguments. But they must be weighed against the risks, three in particular.

First, an agreement that allows the regime to emerge from the war as the perceived victor instantly magnifies our overall geopolitical risks.

China will take note not only of our munitions shortage (which it could have learned of before the current war simply by reading The Times) but also of the fact that the president lost his appetite for war after just 39 days and 13 military fatalities. U.S. allies in the region will take similar note: Why would the Saudis or Pakistanis want to incur the domestic risks of recognizing Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, as Trump is now imploring them to do, if Israel and the United States look like the weak horses against Iran in the struggle for regional hegemony?

Worse: Iran’s new-generation leaders will draw the lesson that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a card they can play at will, knowing they have a greater tolerance than their adversaries for the pain it might impose. That means they’ll use it or threaten it to extract an ever-increasing list of economic and strategic demands. A deal to end the current blockade is merely an enticement for the next blockade and the one after that.

Second, the adage, familiar to this administration, that the Iranian regime has never won a war or lost a negotiation happens to be true. That’s not just because the regime has a genius for bargaining, though it does. It has an equal genius for bending and breaking rules and agreements whenever it suits its needs.

That was true with the much-vaunted Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, some of whose terms — such as Iran’s obligation to be open about its past nuclear-weapons work — the regime was violating long before Trump pulled the United States out of it in his first term. It was true of Iran’s obligations as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, whose terms Iran was also violating through what the International Atomic Energy Agency described last year as an “insistence on a unique and unilateral approach to its legally binding obligation.”

Why should anyone expect Iran to act any differently now? The risk of a resumption of the war might be an inducement for the regime to negotiate in something like good faith. Yet Trump has already threatened to restart high-intensity fighting on at least seven different occasions since the current cease-fire began — and backed down every time. The closer we get to the midterms, the more political incentive Trump has to avoid conflict.

The Iranians know this, which is why they’ll play for time with a carefully balanced set of tantalizing promises and extraneous demands, whether about Hezbollah or the financial payoffs they’ll insist upon in exchange for easily reversible concessions. Moving along this road guarantees that Trump will find himself agreeing to the same kinds of terms he once denounced when they were made by Barack Obama or Joe Biden.

Finally, Trump will get no political relief in the midterms if his signature presidential act for 2026 is a failed war. Not many like paying more for gas, but many are also willing to swallow the cost for a worthy objective — such as removing a potent and rising menace to America’s security and our vital interests. But economic pain in pursuit of strategic futility is an unforgivable political blunder. Trump is on the cusp of it now.

So what should the administration do? Heed the words of Robert Frost: “The best way out is always through.”

Though it’s easy to miss, given the information blackout that (at least until this week) Iran imposed by shutting down the internet, the regime itself hangs by slender threads: a worthless currency, a mostly bankrupt state, a badly wounded military, all-but-undefended airspace, and a leadership whose final claim to legitimacy is that it has stood up to the Great and Little Satans and, so far, survived.

Trump can still deny them that claim. The United States struck some targets in Iran on Monday. Now Trump can announce that we will destroy a facility of military significance to the regime pending a material Iranian concession, and make good on the threat. The next day, two targets, and so on. If Iran opts to retaliate against our Gulf allies, then it’s past time they start behaving like cooperative allies, by either joining the fight or at least not obstructing it.

 

Trump need not be defeated in this war, but he’s close. Should he lose it, what remains of his presidency will go down with it.

 

Iran’s New ‘Nuclear’ Weapon

 

Iran’s New ‘Nuclear’ Weapon

What happens if the U.S. declines to fight for the Strait of Hormuz.

Eric S. Edelman, Reuel Marc Gerecht, & Ray Takeyh / May 26, 2026

 

The Islamic Republic isn’t a problem that can be wished away through quick fixes. Countering Iran, which is a far less challenging foe than the former Soviet Union and communist-turned-fascist China, is, nonetheless, a demanding prospect. And we know what doesn’t work: Arms-control agreements laced with financial dividends didn’t transform the Islamist regime into a responsible state.

If anything, Barack Obama’s nuclear deal provided the cash that allowed Tehran to intensify its malevolent behavior. Washington’s exclusive focus on Iran’s nuclear threat also told Tehran that its proxy-war strategy against Israel wouldn’t encounter any serious American opposition. Any new nuclear deal, if one is even possible today, will likely recertify all the crippling weaknesses of the first accord and possibly add more. 

Donald Trump appears on the cusp of an agreement to demilitarize, at least temporarily, the Hormuz Strait. Ancillary to this may be certain Iranian nuclear promises and U.S. sanctions relief. Whatever the actual details of this accord are, no matter whether it later, in part or entirely, falls apart, this agreement flows directly from Tehran dueling Washington to a standstill. Iranian tenacity, not the acumen of the regime’s diplomats and statesmen or the feebleness of their American counterparts, has led to this point.  

An indisputable truth: A massive bombing campaign by Israel and the United States has allowed Tehran to see the incomparable utility of the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon against the global economy and its primary enemies. Donald Trump may have finally “TACOed” because he’s unwilling to take the military risks that would surely accompany any serious effort to open the strait. A reanimated Islamist regime—and we don’t doubt that senior commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now think they are winning—might even refuse a generous nuclear deal because it’s having so much fun humbling its foes. In the past, the clerical regime often overplayed its hand. This war, and the one last June, probably wouldn’t have happened if Tehran had been less zealous in supporting its proxies, expanding uranium enrichment, and increasing missile production. It’s possible it will overplay its hand again. 

Yet a victory in the strait for Iran offers the promise of almost everything: a defeat of the United States and regime-buttressing shockwaves coming from that failure; the ever-present prospect of money from tolls on Persian Gulf shipping; restarting the export of Iranian oil to China and possibly to others for hard currency; a potential check on overt Israeli attacks on Iran and greater American hesitancy—possibly even discord between Jerusalem and Washington—about Israeli actions against Iranian proxies; and Iranian dominion over the future of Arab Gulf states. The Islamic Republic has been desperate for a win since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, unleashed a sequence of events that shredded so many of the regime’s accomplishments. It looks now like it could be on the cusp of a big one.

Though we can still imagine a containment strategy against the clerical regime, if the Islamic Republic can hold Hormuz hostage, Tehran will severely wound America’s self-confidence, reputation, and capacity.  Even if some arrangement can be made to allow commercial traffic to pass without paying tolls, which appears to be part of the current agreement between Tehran and Washington, once most of the U.S. armada returns home, the odds of the warships returning aren’t good. The odds of the Islamic Republic demanding tolls later are a near certainty. Freedom of navigation ends unless Washington can find the military means and the will necessary to sustain convoys, even under hostile fire. This frustrating denouement, which would ensure shipping remains far below pre-war levels, may be enough, however, to avoid $150-plus-per-barrel oil and a global recession. It could conceivably allow Washington to maintain regime-crippling pressure on Tehran. Take away the U.S. armada, however, and Washington will lose most of its leverage.  

All nations have their breaking points. It’s possible that the theocracy may succumb to the contradictions of its own making. Yet the regime’s resilience has been impressive. Bound together by ideological conviction, the regime’s elite remains deeply entrenched and multilayered. Though battered, the regime still appears to retain the capacity to mobilize its core supporters, make decisions, and enforce them.

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In January, Iranian security forces killed with brutal efficiency. This uprising was one of the most consequential and sobering in the history of the Islamic Republic. This was the first time the clerical oligarchs faced popular protest after losing a war in June. The sight of Americans and, more humiliatingly, Israelis blowing up nuclear installations and killing generals in their homes was a bad look for a regime that rules by force and fear. Both President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sensed in the regime’s defeat last June the prospect of its collapse. This undoubtedly nudged them toward launching another campaign in February.

But that campaign has yielded a more unpredictable regime. The new powerbrokers are drawn largely from the Revolutionary Guards, with the still-hidden Mojtaba Khamenei, the putative, wounded supreme leader, taking his cues from the enforcers. These men are not necessarily more militant, but in some ways they are bolder. The American and Israeli killings precipitated a shift within the regime, elevating those who had grown weary of what they regarded as Ali Khamenei’s nuclear timidity in the face of mounting danger.

A series of articles in Javan, a mouthpiece of the Revolutionary Guards, introduced a new doctrine dubbed “offensive deterrence.” The series began by taking a swipe at the martyred supreme leader: “Iran’s previous doctrine was defined in controlling tensions below the level of war, but the forty-day war was the starting point for deterrence through expanding the geography of crisis.” The new crew highlighted the geographical weapon that the regime had always boasted about in its propaganda but never attempted to use: “The Strait of Hormuz overlooks the coast of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it is natural that, as a coastal country, we have the right to monitor and exercise sovereignty over our coastal waters. … The world economy’s critical dependence on this route makes this source of income absolutely unsanctionable and transforms the structure of Iran’s political economy from crude oil sales to sustainable transit income.” Ali Nikzad, the deputy speaker of Parliament, went so far as to declare, “The Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s atomic bomb.”

It is an exaggeration to claim that nuclear arms have lost their centrality in the regime’s strategic calculations. The bomb is still important for ensuring Iran’s regional sway. But the nuclear infrastructure is far too battered to deliver nuclear weapons soon. By contrast, control over the waterways offers immediate, simpler power. 

President Trump’s failure to gain control over Hormuz undoubtedly in part flows from the realization  of how much effort would be required to hold the strait after the battle to clear it. Containing the Islamic Republic will necessitate a radical review of the prevailing assumptions that have underpinned earlier national-security strategies—both Republican and Democratic. The Trump administration’s 2026 National Defense Strategy suggested, “[Department of War] will empower regional allies and partners to take primary responsibility for deterring and defending against Iran and its proxies.” The United States has sought to move away from involvement in “forever wars,” relying on Israel and Arab Gulf states who were supposedly “increasingly willing and able to do more … against Iran and its proxies.” More U.S. military assets and defense spending were supposed to be shifted toward China.

Although U.S. partners in the region have been increasing their own indigenous defense capabilities, this war has shown that neither the Saudis nor the Emiratis are comfortable on offense, despite reports that they launched clandestine strikes of their own against Iran. Only American involvement can provide key military capabilities–for example, continuous technically gathered intelligence, persistent reconnaissance, surveillance, command and control, and the sheer firepower necessary for degrading the Iranian military. We know already that nearly 40 days of bombing has not yet provided us with deterrence since the regime still is capable of shooting at ships and our Gulf allies. That could change since the Revolutionary Guards might prefer to absorb less damage. In any case, we do know that the U.S. would need to maintain in theater a lot of firepower to have any chance of dissuading the Guards from further violence. 

Patrolling the Persian Gulf to keep the Strait of Hormuz open post-ceasefire would be a mission of uncertain duration, depending on the regime’s ability to survive the unresolved crises it faces. At a minimum, it would demand a large, sustained, multi-domain, layered, multinational defense presence. The U.S. will need to rebuild or relocate the many bases it has operated in the region in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Iraq, as they appear to have sustained serious damage. Some of the cost, estimated to be between $15 billion and $25 billion, will presumably be borne by host nations. But not all of it. Beyond the facilities, the cost of replacing and/or repairing the 40-plus manned and unmanned aircraft that were damaged or destroyed will likely to fall on the U.S. taxpayer as will the costs of replenishing America’s depleted munitions stocks—an effort that is already creating ripple effects in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

The ongoing requirements would likely mean that the U.S., which in recent years has had no or just one carrier strike group near the Middle East, will likely in future require two. An Amphibious Ready Group or two would also be necessary, as well as up to six to 10 guided-missile destroyers, two attack submarines, and a guided-missile submarine. The force would also require several P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance and RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance planes and unmanned MQ-9 Reaper aircraft for continuous surveillance. We would need to maintain E-2D Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry aircraft for command-and-control purposes, as well as a variety of rotary-wing aircraft for coastal and search-and-rescue operations.

Also needed are ground and sea-based fighter aircraft, several Independence-class littoral combat ships for demining operations, and unmanned autonomous vehicles and manned aircraft for persistent surveillance. Augmented land- and sea-based aircraft would add striking power to the mix. The force won’t need to be as big as the current buildup, but it would be significant, and the cost would be considerable (perhaps $5 billion to $10 billion dollars annually). It would also entail geopolitical costs as well, since it will limit the ability of the U.S. to move its forces to other theaters. Allies would be necessary to supply some capabilities like frigates, which the U.S. Navy lacks, for escort and additional mine-sweeping to supplement America’s limited resources for counter-mine warfare. Our European allies have long had the bulk of the West’s mine-sweepers.

In short, this would be a considerable military mission, more redolent of the “forever wars” that the president and vice president have decried rather than the “right-sized” presence envisaged by his administration in 2024. 

With an American failure in the strait, demands on American intelligence are going to increase since Tehran will likely want to push the envelope and try to hurt us even more—regardless of what is in Trump’s agreement with the clerical regime. War or no war, all of the mundane intelligence tasks aren’t disappearing. Washington will have to monitor the bombed nuclear facilities closely, and the bombed underground military bases and factories involved with ballistic-missile and drone production. We will need to know how many and what kind of missiles and drones the Islamic Republic will be able to build, and how quickly, given the damage to factories and supply lines, and whether the Russians and Chinese will meaningfully help the effort. With a U.S. defeat in the strait, it’s a very good bet that both Russia and China will see greater strategic value in an axis that is already well-established. Moscow, which benefits enormously from higher oil prices and is increasingly under stress in the Ukraine war, may be tempted to rearm Iran with better weapons.

All of this U.S. intelligence effort will unavoidably keep us thinking about regime change in the Islamic Republic; we would be foolish not to do so since, ultimately, the collapse of the Islamist government is the only answer to all of the problems that started with Ruhollah Khomeini’s triumph. 

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Iran’s internal problems remain enormous. This war has made most of them worse. The unpleasantness of an Iranian triumph in the Gulf—and the Islamist hubris that it will generate in Tehran—may be enough to finally shake Democrats out of their engagement fantasy. There may be enough liberal internationalist sentiment left among Democrats to explore ways of helping the Iranian people and keep Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees from killing clandestine programs. We also assume that Republicans won’t go belly up, that isolationism and the Iran-is-no-threat rumination that Tucker Carlson and his ilk sometimes express, won’t gain more ground.

The Trump administration and much of the right are allergic to the phrase “regime change,” seeing it as a negation of the “realism” favored by many in the America First crowd. But the ugliness of what may well happen globally after freedom of navigation ends in the Persian Gulf may be enough, combined with the enforced frugality that is surely coming because of the size of America’s national debt, to encourage folks on the right and left to seek relatively inexpensive options for countering an Islamic Republic doped up on victory.

And the ongoing intelligence war between the United States and Iran will surely complement the intelligence war between Israel and the Islamic Republic. Intelligence cooperation, because it doesn’t usually happen openly, has a certain resilience that defies the passions of the day.

Intelligence—operational—success is inevitably tied to how much risk clandestine services and their political overlords want to endure. The Islamic Republic is an existential threat to the Jewish state; to the United States, the clerical regime has been a non-existential but deadly foe.  These differences in perspective and fear are sufficient to explain why the Israelis have had the patience and fortitude to work the Iranian target in ways that have been impossible for American or European intelligence services. But that disparity, besides producing a certain jealousy and sometimes anger inside CIA headquarters at Langley, offers advantages to Washington if it decides to get more serious about aid to the Iranian people.  

Jerusalem may well try to do things that Washington may object to: first and foremost, the delivery of large quantities of weaponry to resistance groups inside Iran. The Israelis wanted to do a delivery to the Kurds, who apparently were willing to take the fight to the dominant ethnic group, the Persians, on whom the regime depends. Trump, possibly motivated by a call from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, limited the operation. As a rule, Washington wants to imagine that Iran can come out whole, ideally democratic, after the collapse of the Islamic Republic; the Israelis, as a rule, are far more pessimistic about the evolutionary political possibilities of Muslims. Ethnic warfare inside Iran may appeal to them since accessing minority groups on Iran’s borders is operationally much easier; it would be payback for all of the proxies that Tehran has unleashed on the Jewish state. 

Moving arms into the hands of Iranians who really matter—and who would know how to use them—would be a long-term project for Jerusalem, or Washington, since there are now, so far as we know, no organized Azeri or Persian opposition groups that could even use this weaponry against the Revolutionary Guards and the street-level security service, the Basij. Delivering weapons to other Iranian ethnic groups that do already have organized, armed outfits—the Kurds and the Baluch—can’t possibly topple the clerical regime. Only the Azeris and Persians, if they rebelled in large numbers, can overcome the status quo. Until such organized outfits exist, any effort to deliver weaponry to where it matters most would just end in delivering arms to the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian intelligence ministry. It would be quite the trial-and-error process for any foreign power to develop something that the natives haven’t so far figured out how to establish.

America and Israel can weaken Iran, but the task of displacing it will surely be up to the Iranian people. All revolutions, at core, are psychological phenomena. Before a decisive mass of people take to and stay in the streets, they must perceive weakness in the regime and a measure of immunity for themselves. Significant defections and dissension within the ruling elite are the necessary precursors to any successful insurrection. Thus far, the Islamic Republic has gone wobbly, but it hasn’t lost its bearings. Still, little operational successes—baby steps for both a foreign intelligence service and Iranian protesters who must prove that they can organize and not get shattered—may open up larger opportunities hitherto unseen.

None of the above should offer any immediate hope to the United States, or to the Iranian people. We are now stuck in a predicament where Washington may have already lost a war against a Middle Eastern power that has defined itself in opposition to America. Lost wars always have painful repercussions. But unless the United States is leaving the Middle East with its tail between its legs, a bloody struggle with the Islamic Republic will continue. Iran’s revolutionary elite knows that. Do we?

Eric S. Edelman was undersecretary of defense for policy (2005-2009) and has served as the co-chair for the congressionally mandated Commissions to review the National Defense Strategy in 2018 and 2024.

Haidt - Commencement Speech

NYU began holding commencement ceremonies here in Yankee Stadium in 2009. Since then, graduates have heard from prime ministers, presidents, Supreme Court justices, movie stars, civil-rights crusaders, and Taylor Swift. So I know what you’re all thinking: Finally, they brought in a social psychologist!

Perhaps that’s why over the past few weeks, as I’ve thought about what I might say to all of you, I’ve felt grateful. I’ve felt excited. But most of all, I’ve felt a strong sense of responsibility. Because I am part of NYU. I love this university, and I love the students that I have the privilege to teach. That’s why I feel a strong responsibility to do my small part to make this the great and memorable day that all of you, and your families, deserve.

Graduates, I see how hard you have worked. And I love how you also throw yourselves into the life of New York City. Because all of us made the same deal when we chose NYU: We traded in the campus quad for Washington Square, and the football stadium for the city that never sleeps.

Here’s something else I know: Most families have stories of struggle and perseverance, many of which began on distant continents. But all our family stories converge here, today, in Yankee Stadium, with a loved one graduating from New York University. So to all of the parents, grandparents, and other relatives and friends in the audience, and to all the teachers or anyone else who helped you reach this day, let us all thank you and applaud you.

As I sat down to write this address, I thought back to my own commencement, in May of 1985. I remember the mix of emotions I felt as I sat with my fellow graduates in our caps and gowns. On the one hand: pride, excitement, gratitude, and love for my friends. On the other, the sadness of knowing that an amazing chapter of my life was ending, and the fear of not knowing what would come next.

Our commencement speaker that day was a former Massachusetts congressman who said that in 20 years we would not remember anything from his speech. He was wrong: I still remember that he said we would not remember anything from his speech.

His words ring as a reminder to approach my role here with humility. So, while I will share several lessons that I’ve learned in my life and my research, if there’s just one thing from my address that you remember tomorrow, next week, and 20 years from now, make it this: Treasure your attention.

In 2014, when she was nearly 80 years old, the poet Mary Oliver wrote a short poem titled “Instructions for Living a Life.” It goes like this:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

It sounds simple. But paying attention is in fact one of the most challenging and meaningful things you can do. Because what you pay attention to shapes what you care about. And what you care about shapes who you become.

Taking control of your own attention has never been easy — which is why it’s one of the many things this university has tried to prepare you to do. In 2005, the writer David Foster Wallace gave one of this century’s best-known commencement addresses, at Kenyon College. He said, “the really significant education-in-thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” He was right, and he seemed to anticipate that, two decades later, there would be so many powerful people and big companies trying to take that choice away from you.

They compete with each other to capture your attention. Think about that phrase. It acknowledges that your attention is valuable. But it also reveals that some of the biggest corporations in human history aren’t trying to earn your attention, or deserve your attention. They’re trying to take it from you.

Consider just one example. Meta is valued at well over a trillion dollars, even though few of us have given it any money. How is that possible? Because it invented a business model that extracts attention from nearly half of all human beings and sells it to advertisers. Other industries followed: video games, dating, gambling — even investing has been gamified and optimized to keep us all staring and swiping. We’ve all had the experience of picking up our phone, maybe for a good reason, only to find ourselves, an hour later, mindlessly scrolling. That’s not an accident. That’s our phones and apps, doing what they were designed to do.

Let me tell you what I have learned, from my research and my teaching, about how to resist, how to reclaim your attention. I’ve taught a course at NYU’s Stern School of Business, now for 12 years, called “Flourishing.” On day one of that course, I ask students to do something simple: Turn off nearly all the notifications on their phones. Do you get an alert every time an email comes in? Many young people do, so, turn it off. Alerts for breaking news? Turn those off, too.

A week later, I ask them, “Did you miss anything really important?” The answer is almost always no. Then I ask: “Did you gain anything important?” Yes. Students are amazed at how much better life feels when they remove a hundred interruptions from their day. When they check things when they choose to, rather than giving a company the right to interrupt them as it pleases.

In the third week of my “Flourishing” course, I ask my students to take part in an exercise that they think is going to be a lot harder: I ask them to delete social-media apps from their phones, just for a week. I don’t ask them to stop using social media entirely. Many of them continue to use it through a web browser. But adding that little bit of friction for one week, by having to log in on a web browser rather than just pulling out a phone without thinking, puts us back in charge of deciding where our attention goes.

By the end of the week, most students are surprised by how easy it was. More than that, they’re surprised by how much freer they feel. They got back precious hours each day, and a feeling of agency over how to spend that time.

So treasure your attention more than the people who want to take it from you. Never forget what it’s worth. For Meta, it’s a trillion dollars. For you and your life, it is priceless.

Once you’re in control of your attention, you can start to ask yourself one of life’s most exciting questions: “What do I want to do?”

Of course, the answer to this question is going to be different for each of you. But looked at in another way, I think the answer may be the same for all of you. What should you do? You should do hard things.

This is among the most universal pieces of advice from our ancestors. In the words of two great philosophers — Friedrich Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson — what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The psychological foundation of this great truth is that humans, and especially young people, are not fragile. They are antifragile, to use a term coined by NYU professor Nassim Taleb. Fragile things break when they get knocked over or challenged, so we need to protect them vigilantly. Antifragile things grow stronger, so we need to expose them to challenges, diligently.

So how should you live these next postgraduate years, these years of transition? By repeatedly turning your attention toward doing hard things. Throw yourself into your next job, or academic program, or whatever your next adventure is. Take chances. Say yes to anything that will expand your capabilities.

And I’m not just talking about your career. Devote your precious attention to taking chances in relationships, too. You’ve heard it said that “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” That line becomes even more resonant once you understand that your heart is antifragile, too.

Which brings me to my final point. Because along with the question “What should I turn my attention towards?” comes a related question: “Whom should I spend my attention on?”

Once again, the answer is going to be different for each of you. And once again, the answer may also be the same for all of you: You should spend a lot of your attention on real people in the real world.

During your time at NYU, in-person connection was built into the architecture of your lives. You ran into friends constantly. Or maybe someone texted “pizza?”— and 10 minutes later, you were getting pizza. Shared experiences are easily launched in college. That’s part of what makes this place so special.

But today one of the most common experiences of adulthood — especially in ambitious cities, among high-achieving people — is a strange kind of loneliness. You can be messaging people all day. You can see everyone’s lives unfold in real time. And yet, despite all this so-called connection, you may find yourself feeling increasingly alone. Friendship now requires much more intentionality than it once did. So my advice, as you think about what does and doesn’t deserve your attention, is to reach out to others, even when it feels awkward.

Call someone you love just to say hi. Invite someone to dinner. Say yes when someone invites you. Be the one who makes things happen in the real world, and others will be grateful to you.

Think about your most memorable moments from your time at NYU. I’m willing to bet that almost none of them happened on a screen. Most of them probably happened while spending time with people who made you laugh or helped you grow. Keep making those moments happen.

So, NYU Class of 2026, I want to end where I started, with Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

I cannot predict what your future will hold. But I can tell you this: At your age, at this point in your life, with a degree from NYU, you have opportunities that few people in history could have dreamed of. You have the opportunity to become the best, fullest, and truest version of yourself.

Here’s something else I can tell you: The world needs you to seize that opportunity with everything you’ve got. It won’t be easy. You’ll face the universal challenges encountered by all the generations who came before you, and you’ll face the unique ones that have arisen for your generation.

But if you treasure your attention, and then use it to do hard things, with other people, in real life, then — and trust me on this, as a social psychologist — your life is going to be amazing. And the world is going to be a far better place because you’re in it.

Congratulations, NYU Class of 2026. May you all flourish.