I think that the easiest exit-ramp for both Trump and the Ayatollah is to make a deal that’s basically the same as the previous nuclear deal, with only minor and insubstantial cosmetic differences. I believe that the main reason Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal is because it was Obama’s deal and therefore one of Obama’s foreign policy legacy achievements. Trump doesn’t seem to have any deep-seated opinions about Iran, and he’d probably be happy for the problem to just go away. So I think he might consider signing a deal that’s only facially different from the previous one. He could pretend to his base that he’d solved the problem and got a great new deal - and they’d believe him, of course - and he could claim the nuclear deal as one of his own foreign policy legacy “achievements”. If it’s basically the same deal, then the Iranians would surely accept it as they wouldn’t really have lost anything, including not losing face.
Jesus, is he really that tone-deaf? Does he really not know how pissed off the other countries that signed the Iran Deal are about the US pulling out of the deal, and spending all this effort to demonize Iran again?
I beg to differ: IMO they would reject this utterly. Their position will be “no, you come back to what you walked away from” and they won’t budge. They cannot have face and take a new deal, IMO.
I think the Iranians could sign a new deal if it’s basically the same as the old deal, with nothing substantially different. They could claim that as a victory - that the U.S. backed off due to Iranian resistance, lifted sanctions, and that they’ve essentially gone back to the old agreement. The key is to make it appear to Trump, or make it possible for him to make it appear, as a victory. For Trump, the appearance is always far more important than the substance. The best solution to this confrontation is one in which both sides can portray themselves to their people as the winner, even if it’s actually a stalemate between them.
Look at North Korea:
Trump repeatedly declares his handling of the North Korea situation as a great victory, but after two summits, nothing at all has really changed or advanced. So Iran could try and follow a similar playbook - give Trump something of no substantive value that he can pretend is the greatest deal ever.
I think the depth of “resist America” in their culture and their resolve to forge their own path, of their own volition, is far stronger than you seem to. Iran knows they have, for once, on this one issue (the JCPOA), the world aligned with Iran and against the US. They will not give Trump even a symbolic victory, if they can help it, because that symbol would also be, to Iranians, a sign of capitulation to America and they prolly don’t feel they need to do that. I mean, why trust America to keep their word on a new agreement? We didn’t keep our word on the first one. And they did. That doesn’t look good, not even to this American.
Face is important enough that people die for it, kill for it. Iran has based a large part of their national & cultural identity on “resist America”; I don’t expect them to change that any time soon.
That possibility crossed my mind, too, but Iran knows that Trump has a history of changing his mind, and they also know full well that there are people in the administration who have long advocated regime change. They have proof just across the border that when an American administration discusses regime change, it’s a threat to be taken seriously.
The Iran nuclear deal was a rare multi-lateral framework that offered transparency and a possible way forward in terms of negotiating a broader peace. The Trump team took a wrecking ball to that framework with the intention of taking advantage of a pause in Iran’s nuclear development in order to weaken Iran’s regime to a breaking point. Iran knows that, so going back to what existed before just so Trump can call it a deal would probably be only a very small first step from Iran’s point of view because they had put themselves in a vulnerable position only to be taken advantage of. From their vantage point, it doesn’t make sense to return to that place and pretend that it was all just a misunderstanding and we can return back to our regularly scheduled programming. They know that Trump could change his mind at any time.
Another problem for Iran is that, outside of regime change, it’s not really clear what Trump’s White House wants. With North Korea, that part was at least somewhat clear: scrap your nuclear weapons and we’ll talk. With Iran, they were already suspending their nuclear weapons program. There was already an agreed-to framework for international cooperation that was much stronger than what existed with North Korea, and Trump’s team came in and completely trashed it without offering any explanation other than making vague and unsubstantiated claims that Iran wasn’t acting in good faith.
The worst part of this is that Trump and his hawks have discredited the political moderates in Iran, who tried to make the case that there existed the possibility of a future peace with the US, albeit an imperfect one. The hardliners have had their positions validated. Thus, I think it’s going to be harder to negotiate with Iran going forward. As with North Korea, they are going to want concessions that this administration is unlikely to agree to, which in turn will strengthen the hard-line position of people like Bolton and Pompeo.
[url=]The US squeezes again:
Intelligencer (article limit/paywall):
The problem here is that Iran has absolutely no reason to give Trump anything. And IMO, as I’ve written, their “resist America”-ness is strong enough that they will not capitulate easily.
They cannot be seen as losing face(and control) to the US and especially not to Trump; this will be one of the top motivators for the Iranians IMO.
From today’s WaPo article on the new sanctions:
It’s important to keep calling him out for what he is - an utterly uninformed incurious liar - but how many people will read or hear about this, his most recent prevarication? No more than 55 percent? It must be especially tiring/trying/terrifying for you in the US.
Mexico was being bullied but the US wasn’t threatening their sovereignty; Iran, OTOH, believes they are fighting to defend their sovereignty and for their country’s survival. The only way that increasing sanctions will work is by forcing Iran into a humiliating retreat, which doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that a country that just attacked oil tankers and shot down a drone would be likely to do.
If you think there’s a strategy that Trump is employing here, keep in mind that we are using absolutely ZERO diplomacy. We essentially have no state department right now. We don’t even have a confirmed secretary of defense. We have a president who binge-watches Fox News, and two guys who have written editorials and given PowerPoints on why we should topple Iran’s regime.
What could go wrong? LOL
So, no to military action: 58%
Yes to military action: 24%
It’s possible that the Ayatollah/Iranians could - reasonably - decide that a signature of the President of the United States cannot be trusted. If Trump reneged on the previous deal, who is to say that a future U.S. President will not do the same and withdraw from any deal they make with Trump now?
The Iranians might even conclude that Trump’s withdrawal from a signed treaty and subsequent aggression against them means that they actually do need nuclear weapons. To adopt such a strategy would probably mean the Iranians having to weather years of hard sanctions. Saddam’s Iraq suffered years of sanctions and survived, albeit while enduring much hardship.
This is an interesting point.
Imagine if you will that Sanders or Buttigeig wins in 2020. Do you think they wouldn’t be trusted . . . a little bit?
Some say that Trump is playing the Nixon Madman role. Even if he’s not (and he’s not!), I bet that even the Ayatollah gets that Trump is an anomaly.
It’s not that Sanders or Buttigieg won’t be trusted; it’s that the Iranians won’t trust the American political system to provide enough reasonable stability to ensure that whoever comes in behind them won’t just reverse all of their gains.
That’s what the optimists who believe “Well we can just elect a Democrat and make the world right again” – nuh uh, it doesn’t work like that. To some extent, the damage that Trump is inflicting to our reputation and prestige is permanent and irreversible - at least in the short-term. It’s a question of how much.
Of course, I think Sanders and Buttigieg could be trusted. The JCPOA nuclear treaty was intended to last until 2030, though, so there could be two more presidencies after Trump’s second term/Democrats’ victory still within the treaty’s active lifespan.
Iran will trust them more if they can develop a credible nuclear threat, particularly a long-range threat that can attack the mainland, which is ironically something that both the US and Israel are probably not going to tolerate. The nuclear deal was good in that it froze Iran’s capacity in place and allowed time for the possibility of developing a dialog later. From the US and Israel’s point of view, however, it was “bad” in that Iran had already achieved great progress in terms of enrichment and weapons delivery. The fact that they’re that close is problematic from Israel’s perspective because they’re already well within range of Iran’s missiles and Iran would effectively offset Israel’s nuclear superiority in the region. Israel’s fear is that Iran would be emboldened to use Hizbollah in the future, which isn’t an entirely irrational fear, I would concede. But it’s the US that also doesn’t want to give up its status of having undisputed military supremacy in the region.
I recommend listening to interviews made a couple of months ago with Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif to hear the Iranian side of things, such as here on Fox with Chris Wallace, and here on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.
I think that Javad Zarif has excellent diplomatic skills and is a persuasive speaker. Having lived in the U.S. for a decade, his English is impeccable, and he has great depth of knowledge about U.S. politics. According to his Wikipedia page, he came top in a poll for the most popular political figure in Iran, with 76% approval.
Zarif has repeatedly been blaming what he calls the #B_Team for trying to foment a war with Iran - the four “B’s” of John Bolton (U.S.), Bibi Netanyahu (Israel), bin Zayed (U.A.E.), and bin Salman (Saudi Arabia).