In a press conference on Monday, Donald Trump stated that he “would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet,” adding: “No preconditions. If they want to meet, I’ll meet.” To do so, writes Eli Lake, would be a grave mistake:

There was a time in Washington when the establishments in both major parties believed that a meeting with a U.S. president was something a foreign adversary had to earn. Unless concessions are offered and conditions are met, the leader of the free world should avoid parleys with rogues. Think of George W. Bush’s refusal for America to enter nuclear talks with Iran until it stopped uranium enrichment. . . .

This was a hot-button issue back in 2007 and 2008 when an upstart Democratic senator named Barack Obama proposed that if elected president, he would meet with leaders of Iran, Cuba, and North Korea in his first year. In his recent memoir, Obama’s deputy national-security adviser and speechwriter, Ben Rhodes, described [the then-senator’s] reaction [when] Madeleine Albright, formerly Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, criticized his naïve offer. Obama responded, according to Rhodes, by pounding his open palm on a table to emphasize every syllable: “It is not a reward to talk to folks!” . . .

Now the president says he is open to talks with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, without preconditions. . . . [While Obama] pressed Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, in 2013 for a face-to-face meeting at the United Nations, he had to settle for a phone call. Now Obama’s successor, who withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear deal, wants a meeting with the man who denied one to Obama.

Given the Tehran regime’s current legitimacy crisis, it’s a possibility. Rouhani is desperate. Even before severe sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and banking system formally kick in, the value of the rial is in free fall. The demonstrations and strikes that began late last year continue to roil Iran’s ruling class. A meeting with Trump could be a lifeline to an Iranian president who has failed to deliver the prosperity and reforms he promised in his campaigns in 2013 and 2017.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.