Trump\u2019s Strange, Tense Campaign Against Iran Politics<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
At the 2017 U.N. General Assembly, President Trump asked French President Emmanuel Macron to relay a private message to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Trump wanted to meet, in secret, with the Iranian leader, according to Western and Iranian officials. Macron called Rouhani and asked if he was interested. The Iranian leader and members of his delegation were astonished. Trump had just given a blistering speech in front of more than a hundred world leaders declaring that Iran was a corrupt dictatorship whose leaders had turned a wealthy country \u201cinto an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos.\u201d He had called on \u201cthe entire world to join us in demanding that Iran\u2019s government end its pursuit of death and destruction.\u201d From the U.N. pulpit, Trump warned Tehran\u2019s revolutionary leaders, \u201cOppressive regimes cannot endure forever.\u201d Rouhani rebuffed the overture. He told Macron that he had had enough problems at home after taking a telephone call from President Obama, in 2013\u2014and Obama hadn\u2019t publicly insulted him. \u201cWe said, \u2018Are you joking?\u2019\u201d the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told me. A year later, the three leaders were again at the United Nations. At the end of his meeting with Trump, Macron said that he was scheduled to see Rouhani later that day. Did Trump want him to relay another message? \u201cNo,\u201d Trump reportedly replied. \u201cThey have to suffer more first.\u201d In the past month, the Trump Administration has been \u201cdramatically accelerating\u201d\u2014in the words of the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo\u2014its efforts to inflict more pain on Iran. On April 8th, in an unprecedented step, Trump designated Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization. No leader of any nation has ever designated another country\u2019s standing Army as a terrorist organization\u2014not even George W. Bush before the invasion of Saddam Hussein\u2019s Iraq, in 2003. The move was all the more striking because the United States and Iran are not at war\u2014yet.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Iran\u2019s parliament responded in kind, passing legislation that designated the U.S. Central Command\u2014or CENTCOM, the military branch that runs operations in the Middle East and South Asia\u2014as a terrorist organization. In a show of support, Iranian legislators also wore uniforms of the Revolutionary Guard into parliament. This week, the Administration extended its \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign against Iran. The White House announced that it would sanction any country or company\u2014even longtime allies\u2014that buys Iranian oil. The five largest importers of Iranian oil are China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey. In the past, Washington has granted waivers as long as imports from Iran at least decreased. No longer. The U.S. goal is to eliminate all Iranian oil sales, a move designed to cripple the country economically. Since Trump announced that he would re-impose sanctions, last May, Iran has lost at least ten billion dollars\u2014around thirty million dollars a day\u2014in oil revenues, the State Department claimed this week. No past punitive U.S. or international sanctions\u2014applied during the 1979-1982 hostage crisis, the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, or by the U.N. between 2006 and 2016\u2014totally cut off Iran\u2019s exports. \u201cWe will continue to apply maximum pressure on the Iranian regime until its leaders change their destructive behavior, respect the rights of the Iranian people, and return to the negotiating table,\u201d Pompeo said, on Monday. Trump, who last year abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by six major powers, has demanded that Tehran negotiate a new and bigger pact that also covers Iran\u2019s missiles, support for extremist movements, intervention in the Middle East, and human-rights abuses. On Wednesday, Iran dismissed the U.S. threat but expressed concern that escalating tensions could trigger a military confrontation. \u201cPresident Trump believes that by pushing us, by imposing economic pressure on us, we will sell our dignity. Not gonna happen,\u201d Zarif said, at the Asia Society, in New York, on Wednesday. \u201cWe don\u2019t look at history in terms of two-, four-, and six-year terms as usually people do over there\u2014the members of Congress or in the Administration or in the Senate. We look at history in millennia. And our dignity is not up for sale.\u201d The matching terrorist designations by both countries have fuelled speculation in Washington\u2019s foreign-policy community, and among elected officials of both parties, about intentional or accidental military conflict. Last month, Senator Richard Durbin, of Illinois, and Senator Tom Udall, of New Mexico, warned in a Washington Post op-ed of the similarities between the U.S. language against Iran today and the rhetoric about Iraq under Saddam Hussein. \u201cSixteen years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we are again barrelling toward another unnecessary conflict in the Middle East based on faulty and misleading logic,\u201d they wrote. \u201cThe Trump administration\u2019s Iran policy, built on the ashes of the failed Iraq strategy, is pushing us to take military action aimed at regime change in Tehran. We must not repeat the mistakes of the past, and Congress must act urgently to ensure that.\u201d In New York, on Wednesday, Zarif said that he did not believe President Trump wants a war with Iran, but said that others in the Administration\u2014as well as countries with influence at the White House\u2014did. \u201cIt is not a crisis yet, but it is a dangerous situation. Accidents, plotted accidents, are possible,\u201d Zarif said. \u201cThe plot is to push Iran into taking action. And then use that.\u201d He charged that \u201cthe B-Team,\u201d after their initials\u2014the national-security adviser, John Bolton; the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman; and the U.A.E. crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed\u2014wanted some kind of military showdown between the United States and Iran. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t discount the B-team plotting an accident anywhere in the region, particularly as we get closer to the [2020 U.S.] election,\u201d Zarif said. \u201cThe B-Team wants regime change at the very least. They want the disintegration of Iran, as their objective.\u201d Zarif\u2019s comments underscored a widely held view among diplomats and analysts in Washington that Trump, Bolton, and Pompeo ultimately differ in their goals on Iran\u2014and on how far they are willing to go to achieve them. The President campaigned against another war in the region\u2014citing the trillions of dollars spent in the lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior Western diplomats who are engaged with the White House believe that, despite his inflammatory language, the President still does not want to deploy troops to fight Iran. Shortly after Bolton was appointed last year, a Western envoy recalled hearing Trump say to him, with teasing seriousness, \u201cYou\u2019re not going to bring me into a war, are you?\u201c The President also said publicly that he was willing to meet Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Bolton, however, has long advocated regime change\u2014and the use of military force to achieve it. In 2015, he wrote an op-ed in the Times titled \u201cTo Stop Iran\u2019s Bomb, Bomb Iran.\u201d \u201cThe inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel\u2019s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein\u2019s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required,\u201d he wrote. \u201cTime is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.\u201d (Iran was actually then well into negotiations with the six major powers about the nuclear deal that was signed three months later.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Before going to the White House, Bolton was also a longtime supporter of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (M.E.K.), or People\u2019s Warriors, an exiled group that advocates overthrowing the Iranian government. The M.E.K. was on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations until 2012 and was long allied with Saddam Hussein. Bolton was a keynote speaker at its annual conference, in Paris, for eight years. At its 2017 annual conference, he vowed that their rally on the fortieth anniversary of the revolution, this past February, would be held in Tehran. Pompeo also called for regime change when he was in Congress, representing Kansas. Since becoming Secretary of State, he has claimed that the Administration is instead seeking to change the regime\u2019s \u201cbehavior.\u201d But, last May, he outlined a list of twelve demands for Iran so sweeping that they were widely perceived as a call for regime change. At a closed-door meeting with a group of Iranian-Americans in Dallas, last week, Pompeo reportedly said, \u201cOur best interest is a non-revolutionary set of leaders leading Iran.\u201d Yet he also said, this week, that the United States does not support the M.E.K. Iran\u2019s reciprocal threats have escalated the risks of confrontation. After the United States issued its global ban on importing Iranian oil, Tehran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which up to thirty per cent of seaborne global oil trade flows. Zarif vowed that Iran would flout the U.S. ban on oil sales. \u201cWe will continue to use the Strait of Hormuz as a safe transit passage for the sale of our oil,\u201d Zarif said, on Wednesday. \u201cBut if the United States takes the crazy measure of trying to prevent us from doing that, then it should be prepared for the consequences.\u201d In his speech at the Asia Society, Zarif did hold out one possibility for talks with the United States. For the first time, he offered publicly to arrange a swap of American and Iranian prisoners held in each country\u2019s jails. There are at least six Americans, dual-nationals or U.S. permanent residents, imprisoned in Iran, with another two out on bail. Iran has not said how many of its citizens are being held in U.S. prisons, but a review of publicized cases indicates that there may be more than a dozen Iranians or dual-nationals charged, indicted, or convicted. Iran made the offer privately last year. But the Trump Administration had not shown an interest in pursuing it until recently, and only after pressure from families of detainees, according to U.S. sources familiar with the overture. \u201cI put this offer on the table publicly now,\u201d Zarif said. \u201cExchange them. All these people that are in prison inside the United States, on extradition requests from the United States, we believe their charges are phony. The United States believes the charges against these people in Iran are phony. Why? Let\u2019s not discuss that. Let\u2019s have an exchange. I\u2019m ready to do it. And I have authority to do it. We informed the government of the United States six months ago that we are ready. Not a response yet.\u201d Under the Trump Administration, the prospects of dialogue with the Islamic Republic on detainees, diplomatic d\u00e9tente, or any other subject seems more remote than ever\u2014and the risk of escalating tensions is ever higher.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Pompeo also called for regime change when he was in Congress, representing Kansas. Since becoming Secretary of State, he has claimed that the Administration is instead seeking to change the regime\u2019s \u201cbehavior.\u201d But, last May, he outlined a list of twelve demands for Iran so sweeping that they were widely perceived as a call for regime change. At a closed-door meeting with a group of Iranian-Americans in Dallas, last week, Pompeo reportedly said, \u201cOur best interest is a non-revolutionary set of leaders leading Iran.\u201d Yet he also said, this week, that the United States does not support the M.E.K. Iran\u2019s reciprocal threats have escalated the risks of confrontation. After the United States issued its global ban on importing Iranian oil, Tehran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which up to thirty per cent of seaborne global oil trade flows. Zarif vowed that Iran would flout the U.S. ban on oil sales. \u201cWe will continue to use the Strait of Hormuz as a safe transit passage for the sale of our oil,\u201d Zarif said, on Wednesday. \u201cBut if the United States takes the crazy measure of trying to prevent us from doing that, then it should be prepared for the consequences.\u201d In his speech at the Asia Society, Zarif did hold out one possibility for talks with the United States. For the first time, he offered publicly to arrange a swap of American and Iranian prisoners held in each country\u2019s jails. There are at least six Americans, dual-nationals or U.S. permanent residents, imprisoned in Iran, with another two out on bail. Iran has not said how many of its citizens are being held in U.S. prisons, but a review of publicized cases indicates that there may be more than a dozen Iranians or dual-nationals charged, indicted, or convicted. Iran made the offer privately last year. But the Trump Administration had not shown an interest in pursuing it until recently, and only after pressure from families of detainees, according to U.S. sources familiar with the overture. \u201cI put this offer on the table publicly now,\u201d Zarif said. \u201cExchange them. All these people that are in prison inside the United States, on extradition requests from the United States, we believe their charges are phony. The United States believes the charges against these people in Iran are phony. Why? Let\u2019s not discuss that. Let\u2019s have an exchange. I\u2019m ready to do it. And I have authority to do it. We informed the government of the United States six months ago that we are ready. Not a response yet.\u201d Under the Trump Administration, the prospects of dialogue with the Islamic Republic on detainees, diplomatic d\u00e9tente, or any other subject seems more remote than ever\u2014and the risk of escalating tensions is ever higher.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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