If reports from the front are accurate (and that’s a big “if”), Iran’s military capacity has already been thoroughly degraded, its air and naval power effectively eliminated. The regime still controls missiles and drones, and can make life miserable for the US, Israel, its neighbors, and countries that need the oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz. But Iran cannot win this war.

So why don’t the mullahs surrender? Because they can’t!

President Trump has demanded “unconditional surrender,” which means that he will not negotiate with this regime. Nor is he offering them any incentive to seek peace talks, since his terms— unconditional— have already been set.

Think about what it means to surrender unconditionally. It means that you have no guarantee that the victor will not colonize your nation, execute all your government officials, rape your women, enslave your children, destroy your cities. In ordinary peace talks, these are the conditions that are negotiated. (“If we surrender, will you agree to offer amnesty to our rank-and-file soldiers, to spare our civilians, to preserve our national independence, etc.?”) If the victor offers no such guarantees, you might as well keep fighting. What the worst he could do? If you surrender unconditionally he might do it anyway.

Elizabeth Anscombe, arguably the most important Catholic moral philosopher of the 20th century, characterized the Allies’ demand for Germany’s unconditional surrender in World War II as a “visibly wicked” policy. The proper goal of warfare is to achieve a just peace, not to subjugate and humiliate a nation.