Looming Iran peace deal shows how Trump’s maximalist goals have shrunk | Donald Trump
After arrogant beginnings came reality.
The progress since the most important foreign policy decision of his presidency appears to have brought Donald Trump to a sobering point: Iran has been the nemesis of many US presidents before him for a reason, and it is an enemy not to be underestimated.
It is a frequently stated principle of war that hopes and plans optimistically put forward and announced at the time of their emergence do not survive the first contact with the enemy.
But even by this cautionary standard, Trump’s wildly diverging goals and rhetoric since he went to war with Iran on February 28 amount to a bewildering journey that threatens to eventually take him back to where he started.
After weeks of stop-start negotiations, the United States and Iran are reportedly on the verge of a deal to end the conflict; The most immediate and concrete result of this will be the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s closure of the strategically vital waterway, which supplied 20% of the world’s crude oil supply before the war began, had a devastating impact on the United States and the economy, causing gasoline prices to rise and fertilizer shortages threatening food supplies and prices.
Trump’s priority its reopening graphically demonstrates the extra deterrent power Tehran has gained as a result of the conflict; This was further emphasized by the Trump administration’s decision to resolve the issue through negotiation rather than military force.
To put the matter in perspective, before the war started, ships were passing through the strait unimpeded.
reported memorandum of understanding The agreement, reached with the help of Pakistani and Qatari mediators, will extend the current ceasefire for 60 days, during which negotiations will be held on the two-decade-old dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
The specter of fabricated compromise is itself an example of how Trump’s maximalist goals have narrowed and, in the eyes of some commentators, been defeated.
recently Atlantic “Trump’s end game is surrender,” Robert Kagan, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution, wrote in the article, adding that the president “no doubt hopes he can escape before Americans realize the magnitude of this defeat.”
“If it is clear that oil will eventually begin to flow again through the reopened strait, even under the new Iranian-controlled system, financial markets may stabilize,” Kagan wrote. “A major strategic setback for the United States need not affect Wall Street.”
But many of Trump’s hawkish Republican supporters have recognized the extent of the gradual drift away from previous goals and warned of the dangers of a deal on Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity that could be similar to the one signed by Barack Obama in 2015. joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA) Which Trump later scrapped during his first presidency.
Last week, anti-Iran Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Senate armed services committee chairman Roger Wicker, as well as Mike Pompeo, who was CIA director and secretary of state during Trump’s first administration, warned against a deal that Trump said last weekend was “95% negotiated.”
Trump is largely the author of his own suffering, thanks to the hyperbolic basket of goals and claims he articulated at the beginning of the war, and continues to make some of them.
“Our goal is to defend the American people by eliminating the immediate threats of the Iranian regime,” he said. opening statement After authorizing the first US strikes against Iranian targets.
In the same speech, he called on members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the armed forces, and the police to “lay down your weapons” and called on the Iranian people to “take over their own government, citing regime change as the goal… now is the time for action.”
He later declared that only “unconditional surrender” was acceptable and declared several times that the war had been effectively won, insisting that Iran’s air force, navy, and overall military capacity had been effectively destroyed.
“Trump started this war with these maximalist goals, clearly stated, that he wants regime change, that he wants regime change, that he wants to destroy their nuclear programs, destroy their missile capabilities, destroy their regional allies or their so-called proxies,” said Sina Toossi, an analyst at the Center for International Policy. he said.
“Then we see that he eventually agrees to a ceasefire. We know from all the news that Iran’s military capabilities are not as diminished as the White House is making it out to be, meaning potentially 70% of its ballistic missiles are intact and 70-80% of its unmanned aerial vehicles are intact.”
Contrary to Trump’s initial expectations, and despite targeted assassinations by Israel of a large cadre of its leaders, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic regime remains intact.
And while the US president has openly declared that his successor leaders are “more reasonable” than their predecessors, the regime appears more stubborn than ever. Mujtaba Khamenei, who replaced his father as the religious leader but has not yet appeared in public, was reported last week to have predicted that Israel would cease to exist by 2040.
With regime change understood as an unattainable fantasy, Trump shifted his primary goal to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
However, this goal was previously thought to have been achieved with the bombing of three nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan last June; Trump insisted at the time that this “destroyed” the uranium stockpile.
In fact, Iran is believed to still have approximately 970 lb of highly enriched uranium (potentially enough to make 10 bombs), which is said to have been distributed to various underground locations.
Much to Trump’s dismay, critics point out that Iran was only able to accumulate the stockpile in 2018 after it abandoned the JCPOA, which limits enrichment activities and which international inspectors have judged Tehran to be complying with.
The limited military success of his chosen war may now force Trump to resolve this issue by resorting to the kind of pragmatic compromise for which he and his right-wing allies once berated Obama.
Robert Litwak, a professor of international relations at George Washington University, said Trump has had to confront “constant tension” in US post-Cold War policy between “transformational” approaches aimed at overthrowing so-called rogue states or “transactional” agreements aimed at changing their behavior.
“He is in a box because a transformational outcome is not possible,” Litwak said.
“Trump is forced by circumstances to enter into or implement a transactional agreement that would essentially be a variant of the JCPOA, and in fact may not even get JCPOA-like terms because the Iranians are adept at playing their own hand.”
He added: “I think what’s important for Trump is how to get the public support, or the necessary support, for a transactional agreement that is a variant of the JCPOA and may not be as strict.
“[The JCPOA’s] His character made him a source of criticism from conservatives in the United States, who argued: If you are not going to change the character of the regime, then a trade agreement is inadequate.”
Perhaps to disguise the depth of his predicament, Trump has recently begun making some unexpected conditions, including demanding that Iran and U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey sign the agreement. Abraham AccordsAn agreement negotiated during his first presidency in which many Arab states officially recognized Israel.
For Iran’s fiercely anti-Zionist regime, this idea is a non-starter; Saudi Arabia’s leaders have conditioned any recognition on a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which is now a remote possibility. History: On behalf of Egypt, which recognized Israel in 1979 Camp David peace accordsThis concept seems redundant.
Last week, Trump also threatened to “blow up” US ally Oman if it reached an agreement with Iran that would impose charges on passage through the Strait of Hormuz. He accused Iran of trying to “keep him waiting” by tying negotiations to the congressional midterms in November.
In fact, Vali Nasr, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University, argued that Iran’s reluctance stems from suspicions that Trump may intend to use any peace agreement as preparation for future hostilities.
“HE‘Trying to find reasons why Iranians did not sign [but] “The reason they don’t do this is because they don’t trust him,” Nasr said. “This has nothing to do with ideology, fragmented leadership or midterms. It’s because of his record. Agreement was reached with the Pakistanis on one thing and then he appeared on Truth Social and took everything back.
“They say publicly in Iran that all he wants is to go out on the field to reassure Iran and have the leadership assassinated again.
“So their strategy is based on a kind of trust and verification. Yes, we are ready to sign this agreement, provided that you show that you can make a ceasefire in Lebanon and release our assets. Then we will watch you remove your troops from the battlefield, we will watch you gradually lift the blockade, and in parallel we will open the strait, and then step by step, if that works, we will sit down and negotiate on the nuclear issue.”
“But the problem with Trump is that he floats these shiny objects like Abraham chords to constantly divert attention. All the focus shifts to that, but the truth is, as a man known for the art of the deal, can he get the deal done?”
