On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump gave the surviving rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran another ultimatum: “Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”’
This follows the president’s announcement on March 26: “As per Iranian Government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time. Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
A great deal is riding on whether the rulers of Iran, whoever exactly they may be in the continued absence of the putative new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, decide to acquiesce to a deal with Trump. An agreement, any kind of agreement, between the mullahs and/or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the United States will not only end the present conflict. It will also ensure, at least for the immediate future, that the Islamic Republic will survive.
As much as its own people detest it, and as inhuman as it is toward them, the Islamic regime in Tehran has all the guns. The Iranian people, on the other hand, have neither weapons nor a leader, for anyone within Iran who dares to stand publicly against the regime is taking a tremendous risk, and anyone who looks as if he could emerge as the leader of a resistance movement is swiftly imprisoned and often killed.
Then there is the question of whether there is any real possibility that the Islamic Republic’s top dogs would honor the terms of an agreement with the United States even for a brief period. As The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran explains, the Islamic concept of taqiyya, lying to deceive one’s enemies, is a particularly Shi’ite concept, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is a Shi’ite nation, although a startling 2020 survey showed that a majority of Iranians are so disgusted with Islam itself after 47 years of the Islamic Republic that they don’t consider themselves Muslim anymore.
The doctrine of taqiyya was formulated in the middle of the eighth century, when the Sunni caliph al-Mansur was persecuting the Shi’ites. Taqiyya allowed Shi’ites to pretend to be Sunnis in order to protect themselves from Sunnis who were killing Shi’ites.
This was necessary because Sunnis were in the majority almost everywhere, and would not infrequently take it upon themselves to cleanse the land of those whom they referred to as Rafidites, or rejecters: those who rejected the caliphates of Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman, the first three successors of Muhammad, all of whom were chosen over the man Shia believe Muhammad chose for the job, Ali Ibn Abi Talib. Until the conversion of Persia to Shi’ism, taqiyya was an indispensable tool for the very survival of the Shi’ites.
Faced with a threat of similar magnitude today, the Islamic Republic is likely to have recourse to the strategies that Shia have employed throughout history. After all, the implementation of Shi’ite Islam is the regime’s entire reason for being. That means, quite simply, that whatever agreement the mullahs might make with Trump now, especially in response to his ultimatum, would beyond any doubt involve the Islamic Republic lying until the heat is off.
Related: America-Hating U.S. Leftists Are Rooting Hard for the Islamic Republic of Iran
There is, of course, also the option that the Islamic Republic will not agree to any deal. The IRGC and the surviving mullahs may bank on the possibility that Trump’s deadline will turn out to be as flexible as the one he gave Hamas in Dec. 2025, when he said: “If they don’t disarm as they agreed to do – they agreed to it – then there’ll be hell to pay for them and we don’t want that, we’re not looking for that. But they have to disarm within a fairly short period of time.” Hamas still hasn’t disarmed, and is likely hoping to be able to ride out any pressure from Trump until Nov. 2026, when (they hope) a pro-Hamas Democrat Congress will start to hamstring the president in any way it can.
It could happen. But Trump has shown in regard to Iran that he does make good on his threats, even if he does so in some cases a bit more tardily than some of his more fiery supporters might wish. The mullahs, or whoever is in charge in Tehran, have a difficult decision to make.
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