I have a modest proposal for peace in the Middle East.
Now, obviously, I am not as smart as President Trump. Nobody is. The man’s brain is clearly a casino with chandeliers. And I am certainly not as smart as the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who have spent forty-five years turning one of the world’s oldest poetic civilizations into a graduate seminar in grievance management.
But still. As a humble civilian with no army, no centrifuges, no golf courses, and no revolutionary committee at my disposal, I would like to offer a deal.
Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz. Unconditionally.
No toll booth. No maritime hostage cosplay. No “we may or may not close one of the most important shipping lanes on earth depending on how emotionally dysregulated our regime is feeling this week.”
Open waters means open waters.
Arab neighbors have the right to ship their oil. Ships have the right to pass. The Persian Gulf is not a nightclub where the bouncer has watched too much Hezbollah television.
And Iran should stop acting like a pirate state, because Iranians are not pirates.
Iranians are poets.
This is the tragedy. They have mistaken themselves. Somewhere between Hafez and the Revolutionary Guard, the civilization took a wrong exit. We went from “the nightingale sings to the rose” to “death to America” chanted by men who look like they have not felt joy since 1979.
Enough.
Stick to poetry.
Retire “Death to America.” Retire “Death to Israel.” Retire the whole death-based foreign policy aesthetic. It is tacky. It is spiritually exhausting. It is bad branding. Nobody wants to invest in a country whose national customer-service greeting is “death to your civilization.”
Iran should mind its own business. Build. Trade. Write poems. Export saffron. Make films that emotionally destroy Europeans. Let ships pass.
That is Iran’s side of the deal.
Now America’s side.
Lift the sanctions. Unconditionally.
Stop strangling ordinary Iranians because you dislike the clerics. Stop pretending sanctions are a precision instrument. They are not. They are a medieval siege with a Treasury Department logo.
And stop bothering Iran about its missiles.
Do you know what missiles are to Iran?
They are the little fangs of the cat.
Look at the map. Iran looks like a cat. This is not a metaphor. This is cartographic theology. Iran is a cat: ancient, proud, dramatic, beautiful, impossible to control, and fully capable of scratching you if you keep poking it.
Now imagine a cat without fangs.
That is Iran without missiles.
So, with all diplomatic respect: f**k off. Let the cat have teeth.
Let Iran have missiles. Let Iran have deterrence. Let Iran be strong enough that nobody fantasizes about invading it between brunch and a think-tank panel.
And yes, I will say the forbidden sentence: if Iran needs a nuclear weapon to avoid becoming Iraq, Libya, or Syria, then maybe everyone should ask why the world has trained nations to believe that disarmament is suicide.
Iran will not attack anyone. Cats do not invade. Cats defend the apartment. Cats sit in the window, judge everyone, and occasionally knock something off the table to remind you that God made them before He made NATO.
So here is the deal.
Iran must stomach reality: America exists. Israel exists. Arab neighbors exist. Ships have rights. The Strait of Hormuz is not a revolutionary mood ring.
America and Israel must also stomach reality: Iran exists. Iran is not going away. It is an old civilization, not a policy problem. It has the right to be strong. It has the right not to live permanently under the boot of sanctions, sabotage, assassinations, and strategic humiliation.
That is the bargain.
Iran stops trying to symbolically murder half the planet.
America stops trying to domesticate the Persian cat.
Israel accepts that regional power cannot mean permanent Iranian weakness.
The Arab states accept that Iran is not a ghost to be exorcised but a neighbor to be dealt with.
And then, perhaps, everyone can stop pretending this is complicated.
Because the real deal is not technical.
It is psychological.
Can Iran tolerate a world in which America, Israel, and the Arab states continue to exist without chanting death at them like a cursed wedding toast?
Can America tolerate an Iran that is sovereign, armed, proud, and not begging for permission to survive?
Can Israel tolerate security that is not built on everyone else’s permanent strategic humiliation?
Can the Gulf states tolerate sharing the neighborhood with the ancient cat, provided the cat stops threatening to set the hallway on fire?
That is the whole deal.
Open the waters.
Lift the sanctions.
Let the cat keep its fangs.
Cancel the death chants.
Return to poetry.
Nobody has to love each other. This is not a Disney movie. This is the Middle East. Love is too ambitious. Let us begin with fewer blockades, fewer slogans, fewer sanctions, fewer assassinations, and fewer men with beards speaking on behalf of God while behaving like assistant managers of resentment.
Peace, in this case, does not require anyone to become noble.
It only requires them to become slightly less insane.
—Elias WinterAuthor of Language Matters, a space for reflection on language, power, and decline
