All The Way To The Bunker – No Other Solution Is Possible

Peloni:  This is what Unconditional Surrender means.  It is more than a motivating slogan, as it recognizes that an existential threat only partially diminished will rise up again in the future.

Yigal Carmon | MEMRI | Mar 27, 2026

A 1947 photo of the Führerbunker, the last headquarters Hitler used during WWII. Photo by Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-V04744 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Wikipedia

President Trump is struggling with the Iranian regime’s rejection of negotiations, despite his threats that he will “unleash hell”[1] if its leaders do not make a deal. He has called the regime’s leaders “lunatics” and “madmen,”[2] and said that the “Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘strange'” and that “they better get serious soon,”[3] suggesting that they have not been serious up to now. He has alternatively also said that “they’re lousy fighters but great negotiators.”[4]

This confusion about the Iranian regime, the contradiction of calling them “lunatics” on the one hand and “great negotiators” on the other, is what President Trump has misunderstood since Day One. He explains the matter to himself and to his people as though it were only a matter of tough negotiating tactics.

The Iranian regime will not cut a deal with him because it comprises people who, alongside being murderers and criminals, are true believers and idealists. They deeply and fanatically believe that the mahdi will come soon and establish a world of peace and justice. They are messianic and apocalyptic and truly believe in their role in bringing on this Twelfth Imam and, according to their belief, messiah. They believe that death is the reward for that role; it is the opportunity to give their life for this lofty goal.

What does this ideology have to say about the Sunni world, the Christian world, and the Jews? The answer is pure and simple: They are the enemies. The Sunnis are enemies,[5] the Christians, who are not spared this hatred and threats of elimination, are an enemy, and the Jews, of course, are an enemy. In accordance with this eschatology, the Iranian regime is committed to sacrificing their lives against these enemies. Since 1979, the regime has had “death to America” as a central pillar of its ideology. America is the “Great Satan” and Israel the “Lesser Satan.” Unlike what some say, for the Iranian regime, the “Lesser Satan” of Israel is merely a roadblock on the way to fighting the “Great Satan” of America. They cannot move toward their ultimate goal of confronting America – hence the slogan “Death to America” – without first eliminating Israel. Israel’s existence stands in the way of not peace with America but of eliminating America.[6]

Among other examples, the degree to which Israel’s fight is on behalf of America is demonstrated by the case of the legendary leader of Iran’s ballistic missile program Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, who was working on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)[7] program when he was killed in 2011 in an explosion attributed to Israel in various media outlets.[8] Iranian development of an ICBM poses no additional threat to Israel that Iran’s existing ballistic missile arsenal does not already pose – the death of Moghaddam increased America’s security, not Israel’s.

Whoever cannot believe that ideology motivates the ayatollahs in Iran (a tiny sect within the Shi’a, which is itself just 10 percent of the world’s Muslims) will never understand their rule. Unfortunately, Westerners and those who are immersed in Western culture cannot understand any such belief, be its believers fanatical Muslims, Christians, or Jews. President Trump would be the last to accept even the very existence of such a psyche and the motivations of such true believers.

The Nazis were also such true believers, though their religion was racist and ultra-nationalistic. Of course, there is a big difference between Nazism and the fanatic, messianic, and apocalyptic Shi’ism that took hold in Iran 47 years ago – the believers who rule Iran today built a fanatic religious theocracy – but they align in their total and absolute dedication and readiness to sacrifice their lives. Death does not deter them. Like the Nazis, the Iranian regime will fight to the very end. President Trump will realize that there is no solution except fighting them all the way to their bunker (headquarters).[9] Only when the Iranian regime is crushed and defeated will it be possible for a local leader like Konrad Adenauer[10] to rise up, who, as mayor of cologne, was a minor local personality before becoming chancellor of West Germany and a statesman at the European and international level in 1949.

One cannot help but be amazed at what a huge and formidable power the Iranians have created in their 47-year rule. They have progressed in nuclear technology: According to their own words,[11] they already have tactical nuclear weapons. They have built an extensive arsenal of ballistic missiles and three satellites that were successfully launched into space in December[12] and that may have effectively doubled the range of their missiles from 2,000 to 4,000 kilometers.[13] There are the proxies, which have proven to be no less imposing a power. Then there are its naval forces, which among other things fields submarines under the sea[14] just as tunnels and missile cities run under its land.[15] This regime does not only talk, but acts, and has built a dangerous military power that threatens all of its enemies.

Once this tiny group of messianic and apocalyptic fanatics that rules Iran is totally crushed and defeated, there will also be a need for Nuremberg-style trials. They will be the Qom trials, named for the city that is the center of extremist Shi’ite religious seminaries.

Very few believed in the last years of WWII that the end of Nazism was coming soon and that a different Germany could rise atop its wreckage, but it happened. President Trump is trying in every way to come to an understanding with the ayatollahs’ regime, but it is impossible, just as it was impossible to come to an understanding with Hitler. The two regimes are different but they have one similar trait that makes an agreement with them impossible: deep fanatical dedication to their ideology, be it religious or nationalistic.

President Trump, these true believers are not negotiating deals. They are idealists who are ready and willing to sacrifice their lives. The sooner you realize whom you are fighting, the shorter the war will be. On the other hand, if you fail to defeat them and crush them totally, all Sunni countries will become subservient to this tiny fanatic Shi’ite sect that believes in a violent takeover of the world of Islam. They will turn life into Hell in the West as well. All with their well-intended desire to bring about the reappearance of the mahdi, who, in their view, will establish a world of peace and justice under the rule of Shi’ite Islam.

*Yigal Carmon is founder and president of MEMRI