Only Trump Can Go to Tehran
He’s uniquely positioned to restore the Iran nuclear deal.
The post Only Trump Can Go to Tehran appeared first on The American Conservative.
Only Trump Can Go to Tehran
He’s uniquely positioned to restore the Iran nuclear deal.
Following Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, the Middle East is on the brink of regional war. The killing occurred in Tehran after Haniyeh attended the inauguration of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate who campaigned on reengaging the West. Pezeshkian has been open to negotiating a revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran nuclear deal). But Israel’s attack makes that less likely—and raises the odds of the U.S. getting dragged into war with Iran.
Strangely, the best bet for improving relations with Tehran and putting the Iran deal back together may be a return to the White House of Donald Trump, the very man who blew up the accord in 2018. To understand why, consider an old American adage.
“Only Nixon could go to China” captures a general truth about politics in a polarized democracy. Conservative politicians who pursue liberal policies, and liberal politicians who pursue conservative ones, signal that those policies really are in the national interest. Nixon’s reputation as an anti-communist liberated him to try improving relations with Red China in 1972, since voters could then infer it wasn’t some peacenik aspiration.
This dynamic helps explain why President Joe Biden, early in his presidency, failed to revive the JCPOA, which likely would have involved lifting all of Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions and removing his designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. Had Biden freed up funds for the “mad mullahs” and legitimized the IRGC, he would have gotten hammered by the same forces that panned his Afghanistan withdrawal, from which his poll numbers have never recovered. To many voters, these steps would have seemed part of a reckless liberal agenda, and Biden would have seemed weak. Kamala Harris, if elected, would face the same political calculus.
Even after the reformist Pezeshkian’s surprise electoral victory, the White House dismissed the idea of negotiations. Asked whether the administration would make diplomatic overtures, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby answered with a curt “no.” Asked to elaborate, Kirby said “it seemed like a pretty easy question to answer” since Iran supports Russia and militant groups across the Middle East. Of course, the whole point of negotiations would be to get Iran to stop doing things America doesn’t like—such as backing Moscow and militants—and start doing things America would like—such as reining in its nuclear program.
The White House has provided a second reason not to negotiate: The real decision-maker in Iran, observed State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, so the election results don’t really matter.
It’s true that Khamenei is the Supreme Leader in Iran. But it’s not true that the Iranian president is powerless to alter foreign policy. Paul Pillar—who served from 2000 to 2005 as national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia—writes, “The Iranian president is a power center in his own right and has an influence over a wide range of policy. The ideological orientations of past Iranian presidents, which have ranged from hardliner to reformist, have made visible differences in Tehran’s foreign policy.”
The White House didn’t forego diplomacy because Pezeshkian is politically constrained, but because Biden is. But how constrained would Trump be? Pillar doesn’t rule out that “Trump as president may see an opportunity to score political points” by striking the “better deal” that he’s promised.
Trump does indeed seem to see things this way. During a recent appearance on the All-In podcast, Trump said that he “would have made a fair deal” with the Iranian regime if he had won re-election. “I had them at a point where you could have negotiated,” Trump boasted. “A child could have made a deal with them. And Biden did nothing.” Evidently, Trump thinks he already seems “tough” enough on Iran and is ready to take a more dovish approach.
To make good on his promise to strike a better deal, a future President Trump would need to re-negotiate certain features of the agreement, such as the “sunset provisions” that lift some uranium enrichment restrictions after specified dates. If Trump managed to secure an agreement that was stronger than the one Obama got, he’d demonstrate his deal-making skills and antiwar bona fides.
Khamenei and Pezeshkian may prefer negotiating with Trump than with a Democrat, since a future Republican president would be less likely to undo their efforts. “I voted for you during your election,” Mao joked with Nixon during their famed meeting. “I like rightists.” To which Nixon replied: “In America, at least at this time, those on the right can do what those on the left talk about.”
There’s another reason, aside from the “Nixon paradox,” that Trump is uniquely well-positioned to improve relations with Tehran. While neoconservatives see the Islamic Republic as an implacable nemesis, America-First conservatives have supported negotiating with the regime. When the Iran deal was signed in 2015, Patrick Buchanan called it the “singular achievement of the Obama administration in foreign policy.” Three years later, as then-President Trump contemplated withdrawing from the agreement, Buchanan warned that Israel and Saudi Arabia were pushing him to trash the deal because they wanted a U.S.–Iran war.
Israel—and the Israel lobby—still fiercely oppose the agreement and would obstruct any effort to salvage it. But Saudi Arabia may be more persuadable these days, following a rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran brokered last year by Beijing. If Trump, in pursuit of a new deal, further bridged the Sunni–Shia divide by involving Riyadh in negotiations, he’d help stabilize the Middle East.
The idea isn’t fanciful. In the All-In podcast, Trump suggested that Iran could one day join the Abraham Accords, the bilateral agreements that he facilitated between Israel and Arab nations. Biden and Harris, reluctant to give Republicans political ammo, would never dream of saying such a thing. By contrast, Trump has consolidated his power over the GOP to a remarkable degree and received no pushback for the bold proposal.
No doubt, influential hawks would try to block Trump from reviving the Iran nuclear deal. But that too is a reason for Trump to go to Tehran—few policies would more dramatically distance him from the Beltway War Party that many of his supporters despise.
The post Only Trump Can Go to Tehran appeared first on The American Conservative.