The limits of diplomacy

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

With tensions in Iran rising—and negotiations off-again, on-again—the debate in Washington is no longer whether Iran can be trusted.

The debate is whether diplomacy alone can stop a regime determined to get nuclear weapons.

WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says history offers a clear answer.

CAL THOMAS: Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican.

The Pope continues urging diplomacy and peace.

Rubio sounded respectful but realistic about the danger posed by Iran’s rulers.

RUBIO: I expressed, you know, updated them on the situation with Iran, expressed our point of view about why this was important and the danger that Iran poses to the world, which is largely recognized. So, obviously, the Holy Father is a spiritual leader … and obviously the church has always interacted on behalf of a mission for peace and a respect for all of humanity.

Of course! Peace is always preferable.

The problem comes when one side wants peace and the other side wants power.

Iran’s rulers have spent decades funding terror groups, brutalizing dissidents, threatening Israel, and pursuing regional domination.

Diplomacy works when both sides ultimately want stability.

But history is filled with regimes that interpret conciliation not as goodwill, but as weakness.

More than a century ago, Winston Churchill warned that militant Islam was not a fading force, but an expansionist one.

Ronald Reagan understood something similar about the Soviet Union. When Reagan called it an “evil empire,” critics recoiled. Some advisers reportedly urged him to remove the phrase.

He refused.

Reagan believed moral clarity mattered more than fashionable diplomacy. And eventually, the Soviet Union collapsed.

Now the same debate surrounds Iran.

RUBIO: I think everybody agrees that Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable … except the Ayatollah. So, I think the question is, what do you do about it? And you know, we've had every American president say, ‘Oh, they can't have a nuclear weapon.’ This is the first American president that's actually trying to do something concrete about it.

That is the question: What do you do about a regime that repeatedly cheats, kills, threatens, and expands its influence through violence?

In the meeting between the Pope and the Secretary of State, the two exchanged gifts. Pope Leo gave Rubio a pen made from an olive branch. Rubio gave the Pope a crystal football.

An oddly fitting exchange.

One symbolized reconciliation. The other symbolized conflict.

But history suggests evil rarely retreats simply because it is asked politely to do so.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

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