Victor Davis Hanson, the Hoover Institution’s Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow, was named by President George W. Bush today as one of ten recipients of this year’s National Humanities Medals.

The Trump administration has bent over backward to negotiate an end to Iran’s grand plans to develop nuclear weapons.

Yet Iran is unlikely ever to abandon its pursuit of the bomb voluntarily. With nuclear weapons, Tehran hopes to become the de facto hegemon of the Middle East. Only then could it effectively coerce or deter both Israel and the wealthy Arab Gulf states.

After three months of intermittent war, we are now better acquainted with Iran’s intentions and the realities of the conflict.

The Iranian regime has never viewed “negotiations” as a path leading to an ultimate “deal.” At best, the regime’s supposedly “elected” government plays good cop, while the bad cop theocratic henchmen periodically violate whatever understandings have been reached.

Accordingly, talks remain perpetually fluid, punctuated by delays, pauses, and renewed demands. The regime’s art of “dealing” is not aimed at resolution but at gaining strategic advantage by postponing any military effort that leads to their demise. The regime’s mere survival is broadcast as victory, whatever the damage to the country.

As a result, Iran does not necessarily regard overwhelming military defeat on the battlefield as a strategic loss. The regime believes its own advantage lies in the long term and beyond the battlefield itself. For nearly half a century, this wicked regime has survived through propaganda, bloodcurdling threats, slaughtering civilians at home and abroad, terrorist proxies and clients, and mastery of both global politics and the internal politics of its adversaries, especially in the U.S. and Europe.

Its strategy is also to feign detachment from reality and appear capable of doing anything to anyone anywhere at any time. Iran’s leaders are like the crazy assailant on the subway who feels he can do anything he wishes, since most people either fear his antics or don’t wish to stoop to his level to stop him.

All threats, ultimatums, and vows are also not credible. They are designed to bluff or mislead opponents into miscalculations. The more left-leaning American presidents, whether Clinton, Obama, or Biden, reached out to dialogue and normalize with Iran, the more the Iranians loathed these presidents for being weak.

They view Europe and the U.S. not as nations, but as various successive governments and administrations that, to various degrees, can be manipulated. And they have utter contempt for perceived Western appeasement. Magnanimity they interpret as weakness to be exploited, never as kindness to be reciprocated.

This Iran war is unlike our past conflicts in the Middle East. So far, there is no American use of ground troops. The bombing (and thus the war itself) has been historically short, lasting only around 38 days–unlike the two Iraq wars, Afghanistan, Libya, and Serbia.

In terms of size, population, resources, wealth, and military strength, Iran has been the most formidable adversary the United States has faced in the Middle East. Yet our losses in this war so far have been historically low, while the damage to the Iranian industrial, nuclear, and military infrastructure has been immense and unprecedented.

The U.S. has clearly won the shooting war, though it has yet to secure the peace.

One problem is the scarcity of accurate information. We have only rumors and spotty regime-fed reports of what is actually going on inside Iran, given there are neither American ground troops nor embedded Western reporters there.

The U.S. is now weighing two choices. One is to end the war and get some sort of deal, assured that it has already done close to a decade’s worth of damage to Iran, and perhaps more if sanctions persist.

An alternative course is a riskier one that could involve greater casualties and Iranian missile and drone strikes against Israel and the Gulf states. It would begin with issuing a final one-week deadline for Iran to concede to U.S. demands to denuclearize, hand over all its enriched uranium, dismantle its remaining missile forces, cease subsidizing Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, and stop interfering with international traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.