Iran broke the two-week ceasefire agreement within three hours of its implementation. Is it possible to make peace with a murderous Shiite regime after 47 years of mass terror, and how should Christians think about this?
This article is a lightly edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
Yesterday, President Trump announced a temporary ceasefire with Iran that would last two weeks, the product of intense U.S. military operations under Operation Epic Fury and backroom negotiations involving the Pakistani and Chinese governments along with the U.S. State Department, Vice President Vance, and numerous other key officials in the Trump administration.
The operation began on February 28 when U.S. and Israeli forces launched coordinated pre-emptive strikes against thousands of Iranian military, nuclear, and weapons system targets.
But Iran responded, not just with missiles across the Middle East and Europe (one reaching as far as 2,500 miles away) but also by closing the Strait of Hormuz — a critical and crucial chokepoint carrying roughly 20 percent of the world’s daily oil supply.
Then, on Good Friday, April 3, a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran. Two days later, on Easter Sunday, in what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called an “Easter miracle,” American forces executed a daring multi-day combat rescue deep inside enemy territory, extracting both crew members after one had evaded capture for 48 hours behind enemy lines.
The nation rightly called it one of the most heroic rescue operations in modern military history. We got our pilot back, even at the expense of several military aircraft and vehicles. But not one American life was lost.
By April 7, Iran agreed to a U.S.-backed proposal through Pakistani mediation. Trump called the plan a “workable basis” and announced a pause in military strikes. But within three hours of the ceasefire going into effect, Iran launched missiles and drones targeting the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Israel. The ceasefire was over before the world had time to evaluate what the terms of a lasting peace in Iran would require.
So what are some key takeaways from what we just saw?
First, the United States does not stand alone.
And, no, it is not only Israel that supports this conflict. More than eight countries, including the full Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman, along with Jordan and Egypt — have provided basing, logistics, interceptions, and open condemnation of Iranian aggression.
They support the United States in these efforts, and it’s not out of sentiment. They support it because the Strait of Hormuz is their economic lifeline. Gulf producers route 65 to 80 percent of their crude exports through that waterway. When Iran closes it, Iraq and Kuwait see revenue drops as high as 75 percent.
Europe pushed diplomacy from a safe distance, quietly relieved that the U.S. did the heavy lifting. That calculation is not new, and certainly it is not courage.
Second, the threat of a nuclear Iran cannot be easily dismissed or explained away.
Make no mistake: The intelligence was clear. Before this conflict started, Iran possessed approximately 460 kilograms of uranium that was being enriched and nearing weapons grade — capable of making as many as 11 nuclear bombs.
This news came along with a significantly developed infrastructure of centrifuges and buried testing sites and weapons facilities that made Iran capable of accelerating their development of a nuclear weapon in a very short period of time. Even in their 10-point proposal just this week, Iran explicitly demanded the “right to enrich uranium” indefinitely, while the U.S. 15-point position demanded zero enrichment and full handover of their weapons stockpile.
These two terms of peace are wholly incompatible. And the history of dealing with Iran’s radical regime make it unambiguously clear that their government cannot be trusted and has never lived up to their promises even when it was Obama or Biden.
There are also critics who have suggested that both the U.S. and Israeli leaders have said that Iran was on the brink of a nuclear weapon for years — going back as early as 1992, when it was said the Iranian regime was just a few years away from a nuclear bomb. That again was repeated again in 1995, in 2002, and for the last two decades.
While that is certainly true, it does not lessen the threat. In the classic tale of a boy who cries wolf, the story doesn’t end with a boy ostracized for endless calls of false alarm; rather, the story ends with the wolf eating the boy. Western civilization isn’t in danger of false alarmism; our greatest danger is apathy that ends in either surrender or suicide.
Finally, we must be mindful of the real threat Iran poses against their own people and against the world.
We must also be mindful of the important leadership America carries in being one of the few countries on the world scale who can make a real and lasting difference in Iran and in the Middle East. And that does not call for endless forever wars, it doesn’t call for countless American lives to be sacrificed, and it doesn’t call for us to spend American treasure. But it does call for a commitment to confrontation, accountability and leadership on the world’s stage.
President Trump is taking that threat seriously, even as he dials up the rhetoric and American presence in the region.
Ronald Reagan said it best: “America still remains mankind’s best hope. The eyes of mankind are on us, counting on us to protect the peace, promote new prosperity, and provide for them a better world.”
This means not caving to a nuclear Iran nor leaving an Iranian regime to rebuild and replenish their arsenal of weapons to hold the world hostage once again to their nuclear ambitions.
While the ceasefire did not last — it lasted less than three hours — it is also a reminder for Christians coming out of Easter that the world is, in fact, full of trouble, trials, and tribulations, that wars and rumors of war have come, just as Jesus predicted before His very disciples.
While there is evil in the world, there is also good in the world. Good must confront evil and, in the ultimate sense, good does triumph over evil. While peace was broken in a matter of hours, He who neither slumbers nor sleeps keeps us in His hand (Psalm 121:4-5). He never panics, and neither should we.
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