“And finally, you are isolated. Israel has badly damaged your Hezbollah militia, in which you have invested billions of dollars, so it is no longer your protection against an Israeli strike on your nuclear facilities. We have inflicted heavy damage on your Houthi militia in Yemen. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is fed up with you and wants you out of his country, and the Arab gulf states are now doing all they can to woo Assad away from Iran. The mainstream Iraqi Shiite party led by Muqtada al-Sadr hates you for the way your regime and militias have stolen so much oil revenue from Iraq and dragged your Iraqi proxies into your fight with Israel. Polls show how unpopular your regime is across the Arab world. Even Vladimir Putin does not want to see you get a nuclear bomb. A nuclear-armed Iran to his south? He’s not that crazy.

“So this is a moment of truth for Iran. You have two paths: Either change your behavior or risk collapsing under the weight of your own recklessness. But when I say change your behavior, this time I mean something different from when we negotiated the nuclear agreement with you during the Obama administration.

“We made a mistake back then. We were obsessed with curbing the weapon you were never likely to use — a nuclear bomb, if you could even make one — while ignoring the weapon you were using every day to undermine our interests, the interests of our Arab allies, indeed the interests of most citizens in the region craving stability, not to mention Israel. And that was your implantation of militias armed with increasingly more precise and longer-and-longer-range rockets in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Your proxies crippled those states from the inside and threatened Israel and our Arab allies on the outside.

“We are not playing that game anymore. If you continue using your regional militias to attack Israel and you get into a no-holds-barred missile shootout with Tel Aviv, we are going to protect the Israelis, and you are going to get absolutely hammered. And if you carry out your threat to attack Saudi or U.A.E. oil fields to deter us, or close the Strait of Hormuz, your oil industry will be crushed. And your people will not forgive you. No wonder our intel tells us that you are panicked about an Israeli strike.

“So, here is what we propose: an end to Iranian imperialism in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza in return for our commitment not to bring down your regime, but instead engage with you on building a regionwide collective security arrangement. You pull back, we pull back and Israel pulls back. But this nonsense of you nurturing failed states in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq so that their people can all fight and die while you cheer safely from Tehran — that stops now.