By Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org
April 21, 2026
Iran thinks Iran is negotiating with Trump about restrictions being imposed on Iran's rights under the non-proliferation treaty. Iran is totally incorrect. This is a proxy issue. Iran's real issue is with Israel, and it is about Iran's right to exist. The Zionist agenda of Greater Israel, the foreign policy of the Netanyahu Israeli Government, requires the elimination of Iran as an organized sovereign state. Why does the Iranian government think that Iran's continued existence is something they want to negotiate?
After the Muslim world watched Washington destroy three of the "seven countries in five years" for Israel, why cannot the Iranian government comprehend that Iran is the fourth to be destroyed, with Turkey, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia waiting their turn.
Iran cannot gain anything from negotiations. Iran can only fight for its life. If the Iranian government is incapable of comprehending this basic fact, "Turkey will be next Iran" as former Israeli prime minister Bennet said last February at a conference of Jewish organizations in the US.
After all the decades of Israeli prime ministers holding up maps of Greater Israel, originally from the Nile to the Euphrates, now from the Nile to Pakistan, how is it possible that Muslims in the Middle East do not comprehend what this means for them ? See this.