Opinion | Gordon Sondland: We crossed the Rubicon with Iran, so we can't stop halfway

In an op-ed for Fox News, former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland argues that America has gained the upper hand on Iran and must not throw it away by rushing to declare victory and move on.

Sondland lays out the regime's record since 1979, from the embassy hostages to the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing by Iran-backed Hezbollah and the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. He argues that hostility to America and Israel is built into the regime's ideology, so no deal will turn it into a reliable partner.

His prescription is to "put Iran in a box": keep negotiating, keep tough sanctions and maritime pressure around the Strait of Hormuz, and keep using force against legitimate military targets whenever Iran tries to rebuild its missile, drone or nuclear capabilities. "The regime should never be allowed to mistake a pause in American military operations for permission to rebuild the capabilities we went to war to destroy," he writes.

On gas prices, Sondland says the choice is not war and expensive gasoline versus peace and cheap gasoline: "a few months of lower gasoline prices would be a poor bargain if the result were a more dangerous Iran five years from now."

"We have come too far, spent too much and accepted too many risks to confuse a pause in the shooting with the end of the threat," he concludes.