It is Mark Twain, I believe, who is credited with writing, “Good judgment is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgment.” However, the version handed down to me was “Knowledge comes from experience, but experience comes from errors.”
Learning is a process, and there is no shame in some stumbling – and even bumbling – along the way.
There was, and continues to be, full justification for America’s involvement under US President Donald Trump, together with Israel and other Arab states, in military actions intended to eliminate the nuclear capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran as much as possible.
The declared goals of dismantling Iranian military infrastructure and neutralizing its regional influence are reasonable, moral, and necessary for peace and security. All the background noise from Europe is but irrelevant interference to a just cause.
Iran has been aggressive. It has sponsored terrorism against Americans, against persons residing in America, has been funding and initiating terror attacks throughout the Middle East, and has been engaged in developing weapons of mass destruction. It has caused the deaths of many tens of thousands.
Nevertheless, success, especially with all the criticism coming from within America itself, must be seen to be believed. Despite the current situation, the war is not yet over, and the conduct of the United States military could alter the current relative ceasefire and the naval measures in the Strait of Hormuz.
One way for Trump to ensure that the diplomatic stage of bringing the hostilities to a close is to assure America and its allies with firm security prospects, to draw lessons from previous engagements, and to recognize the Islamic element underscoring Iran’s leadership.
America has waged many military campaigns successfully, but it is highly doubtful that Iran will unconditionally surrender as Germany and Japan did in 1945. Iran won’t, and it will seek to renew its aggression soon enough.
Iran's Twelver Shi'ite Islamic ideology
The Trump administration needs to be conscious that Iran is not only an Islamic state and not only a Shi’ite variety, but the elites directing the country are steeped in its Twelver sect version.
They believe that one Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Hujjah, who went missing in 878 CE, was actually concealed by God. They expect him to reappear and be recognized as the messianic deliverer.
If those advising Trump suggest all this is crazy nonsense to be ignored, whether in the State Department or in think tanks or media pundits, then to accept that judgment would be an error.
Of course, Israel’s experiences negotiating with Arabs, both in the pre-state period and after 1948, could also provide proof of the folly of not taking religious fanaticism into account even in 2026.
Time and time again, agreements with Arab states over the past century have been difficult to reach, difficult to supervise, and most difficult to react to when violations increase to deadly proportions.
Yet if observers think that Israel is a special case, its Jewishness and Zionist ideology being particularly despicable in the eyes and minds of Arab Muslims, we can always point to America’s own historic example.
In former US president Thomas Jefferson’s First Annual Message to Congress on December 8, 1801, he stated, in part, that “this state of general peace with which we have been blessed” exists with an exception.
Tripoli, he informed the convened, is “the least considerable of the Barbary States” as it “had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war on our failure to comply before a given day.“
What was that “compact”? It was the Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed with the Barbary States at Tripoli on November 4, 1796, and at Algiers on January 3, 1797.
According to its terms, those Islamic nations were to cease preying on American commercial shipping, something they had been doing despite negotiations being conducted for almost three decades.
IN MARCH 1786, Jefferson, along with John Adams, both US ambassadors, were in London to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. They inquired of him as to what the grounds were for those Barbary States “to make war upon nations who had done them no injury.”
He explained that “It was written in their Quran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave.”
Quite a straightforward excuse for being violent.
The contemporary situation that the US and Israel face is essentially suffering from the same framework as that of over 230 years ago.
Hamas has been violating the terms of the ceasefire as well as reorganizing its military capabilities and re-extending its administrative grip in Gaza. The Jerusalem Post reported on May 7 that Hamas has not yet agreed to disarm under the terms set by Trump’s Board of Peace.
In Lebanon, the ceasefire forced on Israel is basically non-existent, with Hezbollah employing advanced weaponry.
Their quadcopter is a fiber-optic drone that is difficult to stop and even harder to detect. Its operators are provided with a high-resolution view of the target without emitting any signal that could be jammed. We see the videos they release.
Will Iran halt attacks in the Strait of Hormuz? As the US ambassador to the UN asked last Friday, “If a country chooses to oppose such a simple proposition, do they really want peace?”
Israel and America entered this campaign together. Israel and America should end the campaign together, with as many of the war’s goals achieved in full cooperation and agreement.
That diplomatic agreement must result from a lesson learned from the understanding of Iran’s Islamic motivation to snatch some sort of victory and to plan for the next round. America must learn that lesson.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.