A Deal With Iran is Impossible

I wanna talk about a topic that is, geopolitical. It's about Iran and, it's about these negotiations that are ongoing. And I do realize that, I am likely not having original thought. I do understand that. And so you've probably had these thoughts, and I might just be venting, but I thought you might wanna hear it. So what we've done is we've bombed them significantly. we've taken away their air defense. We've taken away their navy, their air force, their, some of their leaders, and we've really set them back quite a ways.

Their economy is right on the edge. Their people are probably miserable. We don't get great information out of that country. But we have bombed, Iran, for a significant period of time, and now they have come to the table and wanna negotiate. My point today is that they don't. They are delaying. They are filibustering, stalling, prolonging by all means necessary. they are delaying because they've signed a, an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, which is an agreement to agree, and it's silly, in my humble opinion. there's no reason for an MOU.

You can kind of have that understanding and then move toward an actual agreement, an actual binding agreement between countries. And so I am watching them delay, and they get upset about this and upset about that, and we're walking away from this and walking away from that. And I just wanna tell you, based on my knowledge of Islam, and I wanna be careful with how I say it, because I'm not talking about all Muslims. In fact, I'm talking about a relatively small group.
based on my knowledge of them and their desire to kill us.

Now, more moderate Muslims don't wanna kill us. They wanna proselytize us. But this group wants to kill us. They call us the great Satan, and they call Israel worse, and they want to eliminate us. So they're not doing an agreement with us. They're dangerous. They are sponsors of terror all over the place. They inspire people, bad people, even in the United States. Have done so, and have done so recently. So I just wanna go on record saying we are never going to have an agreement with Iran.

And if for some reason I'm wrong, and we do sign an agreement, and I'll be shocked if that occurs, they will not comply with that agreement. They won't comply with inspections, that there's no accountability with the leadership, the religious leadership, which is the only real leadership in this country. Their people are moderate. They're wonderful people. They're smart. Persian people are innovative. They are not like some other Middle Eastern countries. They are sophisticated in a lot of ways. You might know some people here who have roots there.

And they are exceptional as a group. But these religious leaders are part of something I wanna spend some time talking about, and I'm gonna keep it brief, but they're part of a sect, a group of Muslims that are rather unique They're called Shias.

Now, you probably didn't, like me, when 9/11 happened, you didn't know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia. and I just wanna go back and talk about that just for, just for a moment, and maybe define some terms that might help all of us understand why I believe that we aren't gonna have an agreement with Iran. You know about Muhammad, and you know that in the late sixth century, he was, he was born 570 AD in a town called Mecca, which is in modern-day Saudi Arabia. You're probably aware of all that.

And then when he was 40 years old, he was troubled by a series of dreams that he thought were demonic. And one of his wives, Khadija, persuaded him to think that the visions were from God. Now, here's an important distinction. When they say God or they say Allah, they're saying God. It's the Arabic word for God. They don't believe in polytheism. They don't believe there is more than one God. They believe that our Christian religion is not just false, but it's apostate, that we were born Muslims, and we fell into apostasy.

We rebelled, and we, everyone was born a Muslim and, Christians have rebelled. Therefore, we should be proselytized, and if that doesn't work, they take more aggressive measures leading up to and including death So in 610 AD, according to Muslim tradition, Muhammad claimed to have been visited by the angel Gabriel, and he was commissioned to be a prophet of God. He spent the next several years transmitting the message orally into what Muslims consider the most pure understanding of God, the Holy Quran.

Now, most scholars agree that Muhammad was illiterate. He couldn't write, and so he transmitted this message orally. He dictated it. Now, the message that Muhammad said God gave him was simple. Some scholars even call it elegant. There's one God who made all things, to whom all people must submit. Key word, key doctrine in Islam is submission because they believe God is transcendent apart from us only. He's holy. He's separate from us. He's not close to us. He's not imminent.

He doesn't have all the characteristics that we know from scripture that He has. He's just transcendent, and we must submit. There'll be a day of judgment, Muhammad said, in which all humans will be judged according to their deeds, and basically, and I'm using shorthand to save time, their good deeds must outweigh their bad deeds. They believe Islam to be the final, all-encompassing religion God gave to mankind. So this dictation continued for 23 years until Muhammad's death, and as they say, that's when the fight started.

There was a small group of Muslims, and today it still exists, we call them Shiites or Shia, who believed-- They were the more sort of the fundamentalists, we'll call them, in Islam. And they believed that Muhammad's successor upon his death should be someone from his bloodlines, someone related to him. The Sunni Muslims believed that the leader of Islam should be the next guy in control. The second ranking guy. And the problem was that he died, and then there was a great fight over who should lead Islam.

And that fight, that debate, has not been resolved today. So what you have today is about 15% to 20% of all Muslims are Shia, and the other 80%, roughly, there are some other groups, some other sects, but the vast majority, 80% or so, are Sunni Muslims. Now, Sunni Muslims are generally more moderate, and Shia Muslims are generally where we get many jihadis, these fighters. They didn't just radicalize overnight, most of them, although that does happen today. They radicalized because they wanted to win over or proselytize other people.

Those people resisted, and these radicals interpret the Quran and other writings of Muhammad, and they interpret them radically to include, after a process, to include killing Christians and those who have apostatized, they believe, from Islam. So my point in saying all that is... And, and Iran, by the way, is the vast majority of that country, 100% of its religious leaders are Shia. That's not true of other countries in the Middle East. They've been throwing rocks at each other, Sunnis and Shias, for centuries. So, you know, 1,500 years plus.

And the only time they stop throwing rocks at each other is when they wanna turn and throw them at us or Israel. They actually don't get along at all, but they do get along in their common cause against the apostates, in their view So this doctrine of submission is important to understand. There are five things a Muslim has to do, and you've seen them do them, that this repeated prayer facing Mecca, a pilgrimage to Mecca. There's a giving one.

There's, reading the Quran and so on So that's really the common ground, these five things, that all Muslims have. But where it gets interesting is the way the Shias interpret, Sharia and jihadism. They-- The word jihad does not necessarily, have an evil meaning. It actually, among other things, means the struggle. Most Muslims, most moderate Muslim, most moderate Muslims believe that this jihad is a battle against the flesh But also you've heard of Sharia law.

That's really just the law according to the Quran and other of the religious writings of Islam that governs kind of the way of life, all ways of life, including finances, dress, customs, diet, dietary issues. It's comprehensive. So Sharia is used, though, by the more radical element within Islam. I'm not talking about Dearborn, Michigan, I'm talking about radicals.

I'm talking primarily about Shias in Iran right now But Sharia then is used to control people My point is the religious leaders in Iran believe they are duty-bound to do what they're doing and to destroy the United States of America and Israel, probably not in that order They believe it is their religious duty before Allah to do so. They believe this worldwide ummah, this worldwide thing, this worldwide collection of Muslims should be united against the infidels. They believe in a sense of uniformity.

They believe that all of their doctrines should be uniform. I won't take the time to explain Mecca and the reason it was, significant except to say it's, it's where, idols, he thought they were most were idols, were housed and, he wanted to destroy them because he opposed polytheism So my point is that the nation of Iran will not sign an agreement with us, and if they do, they won't submit in any way to its enforcement. They won't comply because they believe this is a hill they must die on. They're required to die on. They seem awfully opportunistic.

They seem like they drag their feet at every turn. They seem awfully violent, and all those things are true, but what they really are religious zealots who've interpreted the Quran the most radical of ways. I don't believe all of, even a majority of, the Iranian people roll that way. But I think our country is being very naive about this, and I know there's political divide even among Republicans who try to support President Trump. There's a divide over whether this makes sense or not, or whether the war, the...
or whatever it was, made sense.

And so I just wanna go on record saying, no, it doesn't make sense unless you consider President Trump's ego. And I won't go through all the examples. I've tried to be a supporter 'cause his policies are better than the other guys, in my opinion. But wow, is that ego huge.

Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Marco Rubio, who's the most qualified, and any number of other people can go over to Pakistan or wherever they're going again and again to negotiate and can think they have a deal over and over again, but they're never going to have an enforceable deal that accomplishes our objectives with Iran.

I'm not advocating for this, but they- if we do have the stated purpose that we've gone over there for with our young men and women and incredible equipment, our powerful, our powerful military operation, if we're really serious about accomplishing our objectives, and I'm not advocating this, there's only one way to do it, and that is just wipe them off the face of the earth. I would hope there's a way to do that without killing civilians or killing lots of civilians. We're not gonna do that. That's not gonna happen. We don't have that resolve.

Therefore, regime change, which we're not very good at anyway, is not possible. This regime is going to continue. Even restricting their ballistic missiles, their ability to make them, I believe, is not realistic. You saw how long and how much we bombed them, and they still have some offensive capability with drones and other technology. You're watching this play out in Ukraine. I wanna go on record just saying that we shouldn't feel good about where negotiations are with Iran, and I believe we should have very low expectations for the future.

I think we've done some good things by limiting wiping out their navy and air force, among other things, wiping out their missile defense systems and other things, and kinda getting some control over the Strait of Hormuz. But... And it is important for oil to flow, but these are really smart, opportunistic religious zealots who must stop at nothing. They don't have to have a pep talk in the morning to have resolve because they believe in the doctrine of submission, and that's my point for today.

I have to imagine people like Marco Rubio have to bite their tongues on a daily basis. I support our country. I support our objectives. I want to support President Trump. I want to be proud of not just our country, but of his work. I am proud of his administration for the most part. But this problem's not gonna be solved this way. There's no negotiating. There are stories throughout history for hours on naive people who thought they were negotiating with normal people and had to learn the hard way that is not the case with radical Islam, radical jihadis.

Now, I haven't disparaged moderate Muslims, the vast majority of Muslims. They don't interpret their holy documents, their sacred documents this way. I want them to come to Christ. I want them to understand the gospel. They are not far from that understanding by virtue of the fact that for those who are educated on their religion, they believe it-- We have some common ground. We don't have much, but we've got some common ground. We don't start at zero. They actually understand something of, and it's a small portion, the very character of God.

So don't despair if you have Muslim friends, Muslim neighbors. they are, they are generally able to understand the gospel. They have to completely rethink who Jesus is, and that's problematic. I'm not suggesting we all hold hands and get along and don't try to help them understand the gospel itself. It's not the same. Their doctrine of submission and the gospel, the redemptive work of Christ, are not the same at all. But we do have common ground And moderate Muslims aren't looking to destroy Christians.

But there is a group of radical Shias who are jihadists, who live in Iran, who aren't like the rest of them, and I don't think we need to be naive about that going forward. We need to allocate our resources wisely and carefully. Allocating them on regime change there when we don't have the resolve to do what it would take is silly and foolish and wasteful.