When he sat in his isolated office negotiating with history

A similar pattern unfolded with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003. He lived in profound isolation, his palace effectively under siege for years. Any settlement reached under the pressure of missiles would have been seen as a political humiliation. He believed victory was still possible. In reality, the American invasion swept away his regime within weeks. Saddam was captured in December 2003 and executed in 2006.

In other parts of the world, such calculations ended much the same way. Panama's military ruler, Manuel Noriega, refused to step aside despite American pressure. The result was the United States invasion of Panama in 1989 and his arrest. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi refused to relinquish power during the 2011 uprising, and it ended with the fall of his regime and his death. In early 2026, Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro also refused to yield, and American forces arrested him at his palace and transferred him to prisons in the United States.

There are other cases in which a decision maker had the luxury of rejecting the final offer. In 2000, Washington was sponsoring Syrian-Israeli negotiations. The administration of President Bill Clinton bet on the factor of time. The assumption was that Hafez al-Assad, nearing the end of his life, might prefer to secure the transfer of power to his son Bashar through an agreement that would open the door to a new era.

But Assad read the equation differently from his isolated palace. For him, the issue was not simply the recovery of the geography of the Golan. It was a matter bound up with history. He had lost the Golan in the 1967 war and reached the palace in 1970. He was not prepared to bequeath his son an incomplete agreement.

Hafez al-Assad died in June 2000. Weeks later, the pattern repeated itself at the Camp David negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, under American sponsorship. Yasser Arafat came under immense pressure to accept that historic opportunity: a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with complex arrangements for Jerusalem. At a pivotal moment, Arafat invoked the memory of Saladin and the weight of history and Jerusalem. In that instant, he was thinking not only about the balance of power but also about his own image. He later found himself besieged in the Muqata'a in Ramallah, and he died without signing.

Was it possible to avert the war on Iran? Could the bombing of Baghdad and Belgrade, and the operation in Caracas, have been prevented? When a decision maker becomes isolated, he begins to negotiate with history. Concessions become more costly, and victory more abstract. Between the two, the fate of peoples, states, and entire regions is often decided.

**This is a direct translation from the original article in Arabic**