An Open Letter to President Donald J. Trump

Michel Benchimol

Dear Mr. President,

President of the United States Donald Trump speaking at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikipedia

I hope you will receive this letter in the spirit in which it is written.
I am not writing as one of your critics.
You have more than enough of those.
I am writing as someone who has defended your presidency for years—not out of blind loyalty, but because I believed then, and continue to believe today, that your accomplishments altered the course of American history.

I defended you when it was costly to do so.

I defended you because I saw what others refused to see: a political establishment that underestimated you, a media culture that persistently distorted you, and opponents who fixated on your style in order to avoid confronting your results.

They were consumed by your rhetoric.
I judged you by your record.

You disrupted a foreign-policy establishment that had grown comfortable managing decline rather than securing victory.
You confronted China while others clung to illusions of endless engagement.
You forced NATO allies to begin paying for their own defense.
You restored deterrence at a moment when America’s adversaries had begun to believe there would be no consequences for their actions.
You recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital when generations of presidents chose hesitation over courage.
You recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
You withdrew from a fatally flawed Iran nuclear agreement because you understood that temporary restrictions do not produce lasting security.
You ordered the elimination of Qassem Soleimani, reestablishing the principle that American power carries consequences.
You brokered the Abraham Accords—achieving what decades of diplomats declared impossible—and demonstrated that peace is built through strength, clarity, and shared interests, not concessions to rejectionism.

These were not routine achievements.
They reordered the strategic balance of the Middle East.
They restored confidence among allies who had begun to doubt American resolve.
They reminded adversaries that American weakness was not a permanent condition.
History will remember these decisions.
They have already secured your place among the most consequential presidents of the modern era.

That is precisely why I am writing to you now.

Praise requires no courage.
Honest warning does.

Those who truly support a leader do not remain silent when they see danger approaching.
They speak—clearly, directly, and without calculation.
That is what I am doing.

I want your legacy not only to be recognized, but to endure.
Not only to be admired, but to survive those who will attempt to reinterpret, dilute, or reverse it.

Because while your greatest political battles may be behind you, your greatest historical test may still lie ahead.

History rarely turns on a leader’s most celebrated victories.
It turns on the final decisions that determine whether those victories are preserved—or quietly undone.

I believe you are approaching such a moment.

Not because of Democrats.
Not because of the media.
Not because of your familiar political adversaries.

The threats I am describing are more insidious precisely because they come from directions that appear less threatening.

One comes from Tehran.
The other is emerging from within your own movement.

The first is the illusifsecuron that the Islamic Republic of Iran can be negotiated into abandoning the ideological foundations upon which it was built.
The second is the rising influence of a new isolationism that is beginning to portray Israel—not Iran—as America’s strategic liability.

These dangers are not separate.
They reinforce one another.
Together, they risk dismantling some of the most important achievements of your presidency.

That is why this letter matters.

Mr. President, one of your defining strengths has always been your willingness to reject failed orthodoxies.
You challenged assumptions that both parties had accepted for decades.
You understood that endless wars drain nations, that economic strength underpins national security, and that peace depends on credible deterrence—not wishful thinking.
You proved the experts wrong because you were willing to question their premises.

That is why I ask you to question one more.

Many of the voices now shaping the conversation around you are profoundly mistaken about Iran.

The mistake is not merely analytical.
It is strategic.
And it is dangerous.

Your career has been built on negotiation—on leverage, pressure, and the belief that strength can produce agreement.
In most cases, that instinct has served you extraordinarily well.

But there is one adversary for whom those assumptions break down entirely.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a difficult negotiating partner.
It is not simply a hostile regime seeking advantage at the bargaining table.
It is not even operating as a conventional nation-state.

It is the central authority of a revolutionary ideological project.

That distinction is decisive.

Most governments pursue prosperity, stability, and security.
Iran’s leadership pursues the survival and expansion of the Islamic Revolution.
Its legitimacy does not rest on economic performance or public welfare.
It rests on fidelity to a revolutionary doctrine that defines opposition to the United States and the destruction of Israel not as policy preferences, but as enduring religious imperatives.

This is why Western governments have repeatedly misread Tehran.
They assume Iran ultimately wants what they would want.
It does not.

Western diplomacy aims to resolve conflict.
Iranian diplomacy often aims to manage and prolong it.

Negotiations are not a path away from confrontation—they are a tool within it.
They buy time.
They relieve pressure.
They fragment opposition.
They allow nuclear and military programs to advance while the appearance of diplomacy restrains response.

This is not conjecture.
It is a pattern spanning nearly half a century.

Iran has concealed nuclear activity while professing peaceful intent.
Violated agreements while demanding trust.
Funded Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and militias across the region while claiming to seek stability.
It has treated every agreement as temporary—useful only so long as it serves the revolution.

The question, therefore, is not whether Iran will sign another agreement.
The question is whether it will abandon the ideology that necessitates permanent confrontation with the United States and Israel.

There is no evidence that it will.
And, I suspect, no serious reason to believe that it can.

But If this were only about Iran, I might not have written to you.
America has faced hostile regimes before.

What is more concerning is what is happening within your own political movement.

Opposition from enemies is expected.
Erosion from within is what proves fatal.

I am increasingly concerned by the growing influence of voices such as Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and—most consequentially—Vice President J.D. Vance.

This is not about personalities.
It is about the direction of ideas.

Your foreign policy was grounded in a clear principle: America stands with its democratic allies, confronts adversaries from a position of strength, and does not confuse restraint with moral ambiguity.

That clarity produced results.

What I now see is a drift away from that clarity.

Instead of asking how Iran became the central driver of instability in the Middle East, these voices increasingly ask why America supports Israel.
Instead of recognizing Israel as a reliable democratic ally, they frame it as a strategic burden.
Instead of focusing on Tehran’s aggression, they scrutinize Jerusalem’s motives.

This is not a minor shift.
It is a reversal of strategic logic.

Tucker Carlson has been the most effective amplifier of this perspective, repeatedly suggesting that American policy is distorted by Israeli influence.
Megyn Kelly has increasingly legitimized similar arguments for a broader audience.
And J.D. Vance has begun framing the U.S.-Israel relationship in terms of distance rather than partnership.

Intentions are secondary.
Outcomes are what matter.

And the outcome is unmistakable:
the normalization of a narrative in which Israel is cast as the source of instability, while Iran is reframed as reactive.

This inversion is not new.
It is precisely the narrative Tehran has invested decades in promoting.

It is also historically familiar.
When aggression is reinterpreted as grievance…
when the aggressor is recast as the aggrieved…
when a democratic ally is treated as the problem rather than the target…

strategic clarity collapses.

And when clarity collapses, deterrence follows.

Mr. President, this is the point at which legacies are either secured—or compromised.

You proved that strength can restore order to a chaotic region.
You proved that clarity can produce peace where ambiguity failed.
You proved that American leadership, when exercised decisively, still shapes the world.

Do not allow those lessons to be unlearned by those who did not fight to establish them.

Do not allow a revolutionary regime to exploit the language of diplomacy to achieve what it cannot win through force.
Do not allow a movement built on strength to drift into a politics of hesitation and misidentification.
And do not allow your own legacy to be reinterpreted by voices that mistake retreat for realism.

History will not judge this moment by intentions.
It will judge it by outcomes.

You have already changed the trajectory of American foreign policy once.
The question now is whether that change will endure—or whether it will be slowly reversed under the cover of new rhetoric and familiar illusions.

This is not a theoretical risk.
It is a live-fire test of everything you built.

And it is still within your power to decide whether your legacy stands—or gets hollowed out by people claiming to speak in your name.

Mr. President, Tehran is not waiting.
It is arming proxies, advancing its ideology, and declaring openly what it intends to do to Israel and to the American-led order.

At the same time, some of the loudest voices on the right are busy telling your supporters that Israel is the problem and that Iran is just reacting.

That is not realism.
It is propaganda—Tehran’s propaganda, repackaged for an American audience.

You did not move the embassy to Jerusalem, recognize the Golan Heights, destroy Soleimani, and broker the Abraham Accords so that your own movement could one day parrot the talking points of the Islamic Republic.

You did those things because you understood that a revolutionary regime dedicated to Israel’s destruction and America’s humiliation only respects power and clarity.

Now some are asking you—explicitly or implicitly—to bless a different course: to treat Israel as expendable, to treat Iran as manageable, and to treat your own greatest achievements as negotiable.

I am asking you to say no.

Say no to the idea that “America First” means sacrificing an ally that has stood on the front lines of the same enemies you confronted.

Say no to the suggestion that the world’s only Jewish state is the source of instability in a region where Iran arms militias from Lebanon to Yemen.

Say no to a new isolationism that confuses withdrawal with wisdom and abandonment with prudence.

The people who want to inherit your movement are watching which way you lean.
So are America’s enemies.

If you draw a bright line—if you say clearly that your movement will stand with Israel, will not legitimize a revolutionary regime committed to its destruction, and will not surrender strategic clarity for the sake of online applause—then your legacy will not end with your term.

It will define an era.

If you stay silent, others will define it for you.

Mr. President, you once broke the grip of a failed consensus.
I am asking you to prevent a new, dangerous one from taking its place.

For the sake of your legacy, for the sake of America’s security, and for the sake of the only Jewish state that has stood with the United States even when others would not, I urge you:
Do not let the revolution in Tehran write the final chapter of the revolution you began in American politics.

Respectfully

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