Last month, President Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Islamic Republic of Iran containing a stunning list of concessions on the part of the United States. The deal provided an extended 60-day ceasefire, provided protection to Iran’s terror proxy in Lebanon, created a pathway to unprecedented sanctions relief, opened the door for the Islamic regime to sell oil, and astonishingly agreed to provide reparations to repair damage caused by the joint Israeli-US operation that began the war.
The MOU, and all that it contained, was puzzling to many in both Israel and the United States who have warned that the largest State sponsor of terrorism cannot be trusted to cease its bad actions—you can’t negotiate with an enemy whose main objective is your destruction.
Though doomed from the start, the Trump administration went forward with the MOU, and even gave the green light for the regime to hold a massive funeral for the Supreme Leader that was eliminated at the opening of the war.
It then became abundantly clear to the President what many knew all along: any hand extended to the demonic regime in Tehran would be met with further vitriol, attacks, and threats.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral was replete with calls of “death to America,” “death to Israel,” and direct calls for the revenge killing of Donald Trump. Israel warned the United States of a fresh plot to assassinate the President, with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee later confirming the ally’s intelligence. The concrete nature of the threat led Trump to suddenly ditch the new Air Force One plane—gifted by Qatar—on his way back from Turkey, and issue a warning to Iran that a list of “instructions” has been given, should the regime succeed in plots to kill him.
What was gained from compromise with the enemy? Americans may have seen lower prices at the gas station, but the price was a further emboldened Iranian regime, which never intended to stop its pursuit of Western destruction and nuclear weapons.
A Lesson To The Church
Aside from the lessons that can be learned in the realm of foreign policy, there is a deeper spiritual lesson that the church can also benefit from observing. Concessions with the enemy will never end favorably.
The same individual driving the evil Iranian regime is driving our culture’s efforts to oppose Biblical truth. And yet many in the church have opted to negotiate, compromising the truth of God’s Word in numerous areas in the hopes that the world will suddenly embrace them.
Whole denominations have agreed to endorse sexual immorality, abortion, transgenderism, assisted suicide, anti-Israel rhetoric, and much more, degrading the Gospel message and distorting God’s instruction. What was gained? Did the world suddenly accept Jesus Christ with open arms? Of course not!
Just as Iran is “hell-bent” on the destruction of Israel and the West, the “god of this world,” operating through an anti-God culture, has no intention to stop the pursuit of annihilating Biblical truth and God from the public square.
There is no benefit to negotiating with the devil.
