For a president so allegedly addicted to making policy on his mobile phone in the middle of the night, Donald Trump’s announcement that he was tearing up the Iran nuclear deal was something of an anti-climax. He had been signaling his intentions for months and during his campaign had made no secret of his contempt for Obama’s biggest foreign policy blunder.
What is perhaps more surprising is that the leaders of France, Germany and the UK should have immediately come out so clearly in favor of pressing on with the deeply-flawed deal. While French President Emmanuel Macron went to Washington personally to press Trump to stick with the the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May have clearly been working the phones to the Oval Office. It was a given that Russia and China would continue to support the agreement but the response of the Europeans appears disappointing. Pundits are talking about a confrontation between America and Europe. The issue of Trump’s protectionist tariffs is being thrown into the mix with speculation of a serious transatlantic showdown.
But there is, however, another way of looking at what is going on. Trump and his European allies may have quietly decided on a strategy of Good Cop, Bad Cop. In the six months that the president has given businessmen to unwind their renewed involvement in deals with Tehran before fresh sanctions kick in, there is ample space for negotiation. The ayatollahs may have been issuing all sorts of angry threats against the US president but the reality is that a return of international embargoes is the last thing that they want. The Iranian economy has not rebounded with the lifting of sanctions. This is in large measure because it is so badly run as well as being extensively plundered by leading members of the regime and their praetorian thugs, the Revolutionary Guard.
Therefore, by keeping the Europeans looking friendly, Trump has kept open an avenue for renegotiation. But such talks as take place between the Europeans and Tehran will commit him to nothing, even though, if the stick and carrot analysis is correct, he will be kept fully informed of how they are progressing. US negotiators will inevitably take a far tougher line so the Iranians will be anxious to work their diplomacy, which the original JCPOA outcome proved can be masterful, on the Europeans.
There is, however, one serious cause for concern. The huge hole in Obama’s deal was its failure to address Tehran’s wider aggression in the Middle East, of which its nuclear weapons program was part and parcel. Obama ignored the urgent advice of his allies in the region, not least from the Kingdom, that Iranian interference and destabilization in their affairs had to be seen as a major part of the problem. During the original negotiations led by Obama’s increasingly exasperated Secretary of State John Kerry, the Europeans were lukewarm about extending the agreement to include the reining in of Tehran’s general belligerence.
It is crucial that the same mistake is not made again. The Iranians have to be obliged to see that they have everything to lose by persisting with their current policy and absolutely everything to gain by returning to being a good and responsible neighbor to the Arab world.
