By Myles Hoenig
White House adviser Jared Kushner listens as US President Donald Trump speaks in the White House. (AP file photo)
Considering that the US under Trump has not had a single success in foreign policy during his 3 ½ years in office, and that the president is projected to lose in November, the time is ripe for a deal between the US and Iran.
Trump says it’s after he’s re-elected but this could be his October surprise. There’s a lot to consider. The US has been brutal to the people of Iran with the sanctions and murderous behavior. But it’s not unusual for a superpower to extract as much pain from another before engaging in peace talks. Some would say it took excessive bombing of North Vietnam to get them to the peace table. In a way, this is not very different except that with Iran, it is Iran that’s holding the better hand. Trump wants a victory and only Iran has the ability to provide it or humiliate him in the eyes of most people in the US, much like Kim Il-jung did.
Trump likes to think of himself as a deal maker, yet his experience in Washington has been nothing but failures. He says he can fix everything, but things are more broken now than ever before. As a corporate CEO, he feels he can dictate to others his expectations and demands, but they fall flat within a dysfunctional legislative culture as well as among an international group of leaders who have far more experience in negotiations than he has. Donald Trump has been in over his head the day he took office. This is something the Iranian government can capitalize on.
President Trump’s stepping over the line into N. Korea was the equivalent of Nixon going to China. Nixon was successful and the US and China have since developed a near symbiotic relationship regarding trade, but it is frail. Trump in North Korea backfired embarrassingly. Missile testing was halted for awhile but as of today, we’re in no different position than before this event.
Iranian leaders should take heart in that at least he will not engage in a war with them, not only because of how destructive it could be, but because the American people would likely see it for what it is, political opportunism, even though the Democratic Party leadership would likely be confused as to whether to stand behind him or not.
It would be good if a team did go to Iran before the election, and for his own prospects, he should ‘step over that line’, too, as Nixon did. Even if it doesn’t do him any good, it will be a start that is hard to take back. What’s unfortunate is that the likely Biden foreign policy team will be hell bent on waging war or greater sanctions. But if Biden is the victor in November, he’d be hard press to argue that we should resume the previous hostile relations with Iran.
Myles Hoenig is a political analyst in Baltimore, Maryland. He ran for Congress in 2016 as a Green Party candidate.
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