In 1941, two Czechs trained by British special forces parachuted into their German-occupied homeland and, coordinating with the local pro-Allied underground, carried out a daring plan to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, who was Heinrich Himmler’s right-hand man. The Nazis memorialized Heydrich, whose responsibilities included organizing the murder of European Jewry, by naming three death camps after him. To punish the Czechs, they also carried out a horrifying massacre in the village of Lidice, sending the surviving women to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and the children to the gas chambers. Anthropoid tells the story of the assassination and its aftermath while, according to James Kirchick, handling with subtlety the moral complexity that goes into resisting evil when one knows full well that there will be a high price to pay:

To be sure, the predicament Czechs faced on the question of resistance was far [removed from] that confronted by Jews, whose fate under the Nazis was everywhere the same: death. . . . The Nazis’ ultimate plan for the Czechs, however, did not involve extermination, and so the question of how to resist a far more powerful adversary, if at all, was hardly so [clear-cut]. . . .

Some leaders of the Czech underground counseled against [the plot on Heydrich’s life].

Yet blaming the Czech government-in-exile or [Heydrich’s assassins] for the massacre at Lidice and other atrocities absolves the Nazis of their own barbarism. It also betrays a seductively reductionist logic in which questioning the wisdom of certain acts of resistance can lead easily to utter passivity in the face of tyranny. . . .

In light of the ways in which Heydrich had all but eliminated Czech resistance to the German war machine, to kill him and send the message that not even high-ranking Nazis were safe in places they thought they controlled served an important strategic goal. . . .

[Furthermore, prior] to his assassination, Heydrich had ordered the execution of thousands of Czech intellectuals and political opponents. Who is to say that, absent his premature death, he would not have ordered the execution of thousands more on a similar whim? . . .

[T]here exists no simple arithmetic that one can employ to justify or condemn an undertaking like the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich; there is no easy way of concluding that, were a few dozen Lidice women sent to Auschwitz [where they would have been killed] instead of to Ravensbrück [where they were likely to survive], the mission would have been immoral, but were a few dozen of the village’s men sentenced to hard labor instead of execution, it would have been vindicated. Besides, such questions miss the forest for the trees. For if there is an overarching lesson to be gleaned, . . . it is the enduring responsibility of those who have power to protect those who don’t.

In 2003, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, spooked by the American display of might in Iraq, decided to destroy or surrender his entire nuclear program. Informed observers have suggested that the deal he made with the U.S. should serve as a model for any agreement with Iran. Robert Joseph provides some useful background:

Gaddafi had convinced himself that Libya would be next on the U.S. target list after Iraq. There was no reason or need to threaten Libya with bombing as Gaddafi was quick to tell almost every visitor that he did not want to be Saddam Hussein. The images of Saddam being pulled from his spider hole . . . played on his mind.

President Bush’s goal was to have Libya serve as an alternative model to Iraq. Instead of war, proliferators would give up their nuclear programs in exchange for relief from economic and political sanctions.

Any outcome that permits Iran to enrich uranium at any level will fail the one standard that President Trump has established: Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Limiting enrichment even to low levels will allow Iran to break out of the agreement at any time, no matter what the agreement says.

Iran is not a normal government that observes the rules of international behavior or fair “dealmaking.” This is a regime that relies on regional terror and brutal repression of its citizens to stay in power. It has a long history of using negotiations to expand its nuclear program. Its negotiating tactics are clear: extend the negotiations as long as possible and meet any concession with more demands.