Without cruelty there is no festival

The hawks never wanted a deal. They still don’t. That’s the observation. Everything else follows from it.

Two days before the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, American negotiators were still sitting across from Iranian officials in Geneva. Iran put a seven-page proposal on the table. By the account of a senior Trump administration official, the Iranians had already told Witkoff and Kushner they would hand over their stockpile of highly enriched uranium as part of any agreement. They noted, accurately, that they had only started building that stockpile after Trump walked out of the JCPOA in 2018. Thirty-six hours later, the bombs fell.

This is the part the hawks would prefer you not dwell on.

The argument for war with Iran has always been about the nuclear program. The danger, the stockpile, the regime too irrational and ideological to be trusted with weapons-grade material. Some of that concern was legitimate. Iran was enriching uranium well beyond civilian needs. The threat was real enough to justify serious pressure. But serious pressure and a deal were both available, and according to analysts involved in the talks, Iran had put concessions on the table in 2025 and 2026 that would have been unimaginable during earlier negotiations. The administration rejected them because they wanted full capitulation, not an agreement. There is a difference. One ends a problem. The other ends a country.

Sheldon Adelson said it plainly in 2013, at Yeshiva University, to applause. The US should fire a nuclear weapon into the Iranian desert, he argued, and then tell Tehran the next one lands on you. His spokesman later called it hyperbole. Maybe. But Adelson was not a man known for saying things he didn’t mean, and he said versions of this more than once.

The Adelson family has sent approximately $600 million in reported political contributions to support Trump’s three presidential campaigns and other Republican races since 2015. Miriam Adelson is now among the people whose calls Trump returns fastest. Trump himself has acknowledged, publicly, that he asked her whether she loves the United States or Israel more. She declined to answer. He told the story as though it were charming. It’s appalling.

Trump asked a foreign policy advisor, three times in a single meeting, why the United States couldn’t use nuclear weapons. This was 2016, reported by Joe Scarborough at the time, denied by the campaign. The denial was not very convincing then and looks worse now. The question was genuine. It came from a man who has never internalized the logic that kept nuclear weapons unused for eighty years. The nuclear taboo is not a law. No one signed it. It runs on shared dread, on every person in the chain understanding exactly what category of history they would be entering. That shared dread is what the taboo runs on. Remove the dread and the taboo is just a tradition.

Hegseth understands this as a holy war. At a Pentagon prayer service after strikes began, he quoted scripture, asking God to pursue enemies and destroy them, calling for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” and for “wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.”

This is the Secretary of Defense, at a Pentagon worship service, asking God to help kill Iranians in language borrowed from King David’s wars against ancient Israel’s enemies. His spokesman did not call this hyperbole.

Susie Wiles was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer few weeks ago. She is still working. But the diagnosis is a reminder of how thin the margin is. When Trump recently recounted his decision to attack Iran, he said he needed to run it by her before making a final call. She is the person whose judgment he trusts most. Rubio and Vance both understand what using nuclear weapons would mean, but each of them is doing the math on who pays the price for being the one who says so. Whoever objects first becomes the target. So they each wait for the other. Dan Caine presents the options. All of them. That is the job.

The fear for twenty years has been about a regime too irrational, too ideological, too religiously motivated to be trusted with nuclear capability. A regime that might actually use them. A regime that talks about enemies in terms of divine will and righteous destruction.

Look at the other side of the table.

Nietzsche wrote that without cruelty there is no festival. He was making an observation about human nature. The Iran hawks have been making it a policy preference. Boring, civilized diplomacy produces outcomes that are partial and unsatisfying and require maintenance. Nobody gets a victory lap. The hawks hate this. They have always hated this. And they have now had their festival.

The question that will not be easy to answer, when this is over, is which side of this conflict was too dangerous to have nuclear weapons.