President Trump has been all over the place on Iran, which is what happens when you take a serious subject, treat it with farcical superficiality, believe braggadocio will sway a proud and ancient civilization, approach foreign policy like a real estate deal, defer to advisers with Iran Derangement Syndrome, refuse to read any briefing papers and confuse the American national interest with the Saudi or Israeli.
This American slouching toward another Middle East war has been a disgrace, shot through with the twisting of truth or outright lies. Now Trump has approved, only to reverse, a retaliatory strike for the Iranian downing of an American drone, an aptly chaotic culmination to the drift the president has allowed.
The 11th-hour calling-off of military action was the one wise decision Trump has taken on Iran since he took office. Dazzled by Saudi blandishments, Israeli veneration, the opportunity to trash Barack Obama’s diplomacy and the lure of evangelicals’ votes, Trump determined from Day 1 that the Islamic Republic was the enemy from Central Casting. His view was unburdened by any serious assessment of how to balance toughness and engagement in the long-traumatized American-Iranian relationship.
The United States does not need the war with Iran that John Bolton, the national security adviser, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seem determined to deliver. It would be a war of choice, illusion and irresponsibility. It would place Americans at risk across the Middle East, with no benefit to the United States or its allies.
The Trump administration has been lucky. Now, in a real crisis, and one of the administration’s own making, the cavalier ineptitude and absence of anything resembling process is on full public view. Threats and bombast get you just so far. Iran has called Trump’s bluff.
Just over a year ago, when Trump tore up the nuclear deal that the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China had hammered out over years of diplomacy to keep Iran from a bomb, I wrote:
“President Trump is withdrawing the United States from an Iran nuclear deal that has worked, in the name of unrelated demands that are unworkable, at very high cost to America’s alliances and the value of its word, with no viable alternative policy in place and at the risk of igniting the Middle East.”
Here we are, on the brink of ignition. Over the past year, Bolton has threatened military action multiple times, telling Iran there will be “hell to pay,” ratcheting up tensions wherever possible and extending potential pretexts for war.
Pompeo has been a willing dance partner in this exercise. He has declared a determination to drive Iran’s oil exports to “zero” and energetically pursued the grotesque objective of conflating Iran, a Shia nation, with Al Qaeda, an expression of murderous Wahhabi Sunni extremism. In fact, as former Secretary of State John Kerry told me, “Iran has helped in the war against the ISIS,” another Sunni terrorist group.
The aim of the Bolton-Pompeo Iran-equals-Al-Qaeda maneuver has been obvious: to bring a war with Iran within the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that was passed by Congress in response to Sept. 11, whose perpetrators were overwhelmingly Saudi. (...)
“The Trump administration policy has been unnecessary, counter-strategic and dangerous,” Kerry told me. “It has completely upended the legitimacy of approaching certain issues — Yemen, Hezbollah, missile technology — while having the nuclear issue in a box in the most accountable, transparent nuclear deal on the planet.
“All they have done is given life to the deeply held Iranian belief that you cannot trust or negotiate with the United States, while trying to squeeze Iran into economic oblivion in pursuit of regime change that would only hand power to the hard-line Republican Guards, not some democrat.”
This American slouching toward another Middle East war has been a disgrace, shot through with the twisting of truth or outright lies. Now Trump has approved, only to reverse, a retaliatory strike for the Iranian downing of an American drone, an aptly chaotic culmination to the drift the president has allowed.
The 11th-hour calling-off of military action was the one wise decision Trump has taken on Iran since he took office. Dazzled by Saudi blandishments, Israeli veneration, the opportunity to trash Barack Obama’s diplomacy and the lure of evangelicals’ votes, Trump determined from Day 1 that the Islamic Republic was the enemy from Central Casting. His view was unburdened by any serious assessment of how to balance toughness and engagement in the long-traumatized American-Iranian relationship.The United States does not need the war with Iran that John Bolton, the national security adviser, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seem determined to deliver. It would be a war of choice, illusion and irresponsibility. It would place Americans at risk across the Middle East, with no benefit to the United States or its allies.
The Trump administration has been lucky. Now, in a real crisis, and one of the administration’s own making, the cavalier ineptitude and absence of anything resembling process is on full public view. Threats and bombast get you just so far. Iran has called Trump’s bluff.
Just over a year ago, when Trump tore up the nuclear deal that the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China had hammered out over years of diplomacy to keep Iran from a bomb, I wrote:
“President Trump is withdrawing the United States from an Iran nuclear deal that has worked, in the name of unrelated demands that are unworkable, at very high cost to America’s alliances and the value of its word, with no viable alternative policy in place and at the risk of igniting the Middle East.”
Here we are, on the brink of ignition. Over the past year, Bolton has threatened military action multiple times, telling Iran there will be “hell to pay,” ratcheting up tensions wherever possible and extending potential pretexts for war.
Pompeo has been a willing dance partner in this exercise. He has declared a determination to drive Iran’s oil exports to “zero” and energetically pursued the grotesque objective of conflating Iran, a Shia nation, with Al Qaeda, an expression of murderous Wahhabi Sunni extremism. In fact, as former Secretary of State John Kerry told me, “Iran has helped in the war against the ISIS,” another Sunni terrorist group.
The aim of the Bolton-Pompeo Iran-equals-Al-Qaeda maneuver has been obvious: to bring a war with Iran within the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that was passed by Congress in response to Sept. 11, whose perpetrators were overwhelmingly Saudi. (...)
“The Trump administration policy has been unnecessary, counter-strategic and dangerous,” Kerry told me. “It has completely upended the legitimacy of approaching certain issues — Yemen, Hezbollah, missile technology — while having the nuclear issue in a box in the most accountable, transparent nuclear deal on the planet.
“All they have done is given life to the deeply held Iranian belief that you cannot trust or negotiate with the United States, while trying to squeeze Iran into economic oblivion in pursuit of regime change that would only hand power to the hard-line Republican Guards, not some democrat.”
by Roger Cohen, NY Times | Read more:
Image: US bases around Iran via
