MARK ALMOND: Humiliated Trump must now keep his nerve - and pound Tehran's blood-soaked mullahs into submission

Rarely has Donald Trump been mocked with such relish by liberal America as following his humiliation in the midterm elections. The President appeared in internet memes as toxic waste to be disposed of, running from a tsunami of Democrat blue, and pursuing a second career as an Indian street vendor.And there’s little dispute about the reason for the rout, even among Republicans. ‘The reason we lost is the war,’ Vice President J D Vance said. The Iran conflict has seen petrol prices rise as the regime in Tehran chokes the world’s oil supply having seized the Strait of Hormuz.‘We are going to end the war,’ a triumphant Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer declared last week. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth will be lucky to keep his job as opprobrium builds. There is even talk of impeachment for his disastrous prosecution of the war.Yet nowhere has the gloating been loudest as among the murderous mullahs of Iran.The regime’s speaker in parliament is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a man who has boasted of the street beatings he personally meted out to protesting students in 1999. Last week he crowed: ‘Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said no to war, and we endorse this message.’The world waits to see how the chastened Trump will react. So far, he has insisted that Tehran wants a deal, while offering a $20million reward for information on Iran’s nuclear programme.If he pulls back from the war – appeasing everyone from the US electorate alarmed by fuel costs to the theocratic regime in Tehran itself – Trump will turn a calamity into a catastrophe that will upend the world order for a generation.Many people in Britain as well as America will not want to hear this, but as unpopular as the war is, US missiles must pound Iran into submission. Don’t get me wrong, I did not support this war at its beginning, but it could be suicidal for the West if Trump turned back now. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has been crowing about Trump's midterm sufferingSeventy years ago, Britain was mired in the Suez Crisis as Egypt’s Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seized the canal, threatening another artery crucial to the world economy. Cowed by the unfolding mess, Prime Minister Anthony Eden pulled back British forces, much to the consternation of his predecessor, Sir Winston Churchill. ‘I should never have dared start [the war],’ growled the old lion. ‘But I should never have dared stop.’Retreat destroyed Britain’s residual status as a great power in the Middle East – and worse still boosted Nasser’s anti-Western Arab radicalism. It led to the lynching of pro-British groups such as the Iraqi royal family, paving the way to Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.Today, mid-Atlantic pundits, gloating from Hampstead to the Hamptons, have cast the Iran War into ignominy akin to Suez, but their memories are short.Last year, Iran was months away from building a nuclear bomb. Its enrichment of uranium to the edge of weapons grade went far beyond the needs of peaceful uses.Nineteen miles south-east of Tehran, the Parchin military complex had become perilously close to making detonators capable of exploding that uranium. Iran’s missile capability has been on fearsome display since Trump launched his campaign in February, as its battered Gulf neighbours can attest. Iran had the components for a nuclear warhead and the world is a safer place because US and Israeli strikes kneecapped its capability. But it won’t last for ever. Satellite photos show Iran is repairing its missile facilities and suspicious plants associated with nuclear projects.And long it may continue if Trump’s repudiation at the midterms becomes a policy of international isolationism. Israel will keep up the fight, but the small Jewish state, however remarkable its military and intelligence assets, cannot win alone, especially while bogged down in Gaza. Only the US has the defence resources to sustain a conflict against an obdurate foe such as Iran.Those calling for the war to end should heed America’s withdrawal from Vietnam. After a decade of vicious fighting, the clamour for peace in 1975 was understandable, but those who got their wish turned a blind eye to the disastrous consequences. After Saigon fell to the Communists, genocide and tyranny were on the march (as well as one million ‘boat people’).The shift in world power as the US retreated saw the murderous Khmer Rouge take root in Cambodia and a repugnant regime seize Ethiopia, and climaxed in Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.And it is the blood-soaked ayatollahs that America is still wrestling with today. Indeed, last January, their Revolutionary Guard slaughtered thousands of protesters who’d dared to demand change. Some estimates have the body bags numbering as many as 30,000. How quickly commentators forget what a wicked regime Trump has sought to remove.As much as the theocrats deserve a bloody nose, two levers could bring them to the negotiating table. Iran’s economy is nose-diving. The currency is 3,000,000 rials to the dollar. A lot of its brutal enforcers are getting poorer and hungrier. Well-paid thugs will crack heads, but unpaid ones become as meek as lambs. So Trump could offer economic relief by lifting sanctions if Iran changes course. If it does not, it should feel the white heat of America’s vast arsenal of missiles, until it does. 'Trump must keep his nerve. He cannot bind the mullahs to an enforced deal that forbids any hint of uranium enrichment otherwise,' writes Mark AlmondTo hand victory to the Ayatollah after nine months of waning military involvement would be a grotesque capitulation.Yes, oil prices are rising, burning a hole in the pockets of people and industry. Continued strikes could tip Western economies into recession as Iran keeps its foot on the Strait of Hormuz and rallies its proxy militia, the Houthis in Yemen, to do the same at the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea.But the West has faced this dilemma before, most recently in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion caused a global energy crisis just as painful as today’s. Few demanded that Kyiv lay down its arms so Putin’s forces could swamp the country and the West could go back to buying cheap Russian gas.Of course, while Iran’s nuclear capability has been curtailed, its geostrategic power has strengthened. Not in its wildest dreams would it have predicted how effective holding Hormuz would prove. This wouldn’t have happened had Trump chosen the path of least resistance. But if the choice was between a nuclear-armed Iran or a squeezed global supply of energy, I choose the latter.Iran can hit back at America’s regional allies and its forces in the Middle East, but Washington can inflict much greater harm.Trump must keep his nerve. He cannot bind the mullahs to an enforced deal that forbids any hint of uranium enrichment otherwise.Let’s face it, in his first term as President he taught the bad guys a dangerous lesson by accepting North Korea’s nuclear weapons and even praising the dictator, Kim Jong-Un, for writing ‘me a beautiful letter’. To have Iran act with such swaggering impunity in an arena so sensitive to the West’s energy needs would be a criminal dereliction of national interest.Trump has no more polls to fight and a Democrat-run Congress will block his domestic agenda, so he should devote the last two years of his presidency to settling the Iranian nuclear problem. It could yet be his crowning legacy, for which future historians will thank him.