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Rob Finnerty ripped the ribbon off four decades of diplomatic cowardice on Monday’s Finnerty, calling out a pattern too many Washington policymakers prefer to dress up as “engagement.” At a time when American strength should be the baseline of foreign policy, he rightly labeled the decades of hand-wringing and deal-making with Tehran as what they were: avoidance and appeasement.
Americans remember why this pattern matters: the 1979 revolution and the seizure of our embassy turned Iran from a regional partner into a hostile theocracy and poisoned relations for generations. That ugly lesson should have taught successive administrations that naïve diplomacy without leverage invites aggression, yet too often our leaders chose photo ops and press releases over hard, sustained pressure.
The 2015 nuclear deal was the apotheosis of that approach — concessions in exchange for promises the ayatollahs never intended to keep, with sunset clauses that handed Iran a pathway to breakouts in the future. Conservatives warned then that the deal was appeasement in elegant wrapping, and history has shown those warnings to be prescient; the agreement delayed but did not eliminate the threat.
Meanwhile, Tehran built and exported terror through the IRGC and a network of proxies that stab at our interests and allies across the Middle East, from Lebanon to Yemen to Iraq. The IRGC’s role in sponsoring violence and plotting attacks is not theory — it’s documented reality, and our troops and partners have paid the price while politicians in Washington debated the optics.
Finnerty’s bluntness is the kind of voice this country needs right now: no more excuses, no more moral equivalence, no more hollow lectures about “diplomacy” while our enemies arm themselves. The right answer is pressure — crippling sanctions, relentless intelligence and counter-proxy operations, and an unmistakable commitment to the security of our allies, including Israel. Strong deterrence, not sentimentalism, protects American lives and American interests.
Hardworking Americans deserve leaders who put our nation first and stop treating Tehran like a partner rather than a predator. Congress and the next administration must stop the cycle of appeasement and adopt a policy rooted in strength, clarity, and consequence — because freedom and peace are not negotiated from a posture of weakness.
