29 Mar 2024
Sunday 19 May 2019 - 17:29
Story Code : 349387

Trumps artless Iran dealing

Sputnik - President Trump is reportedly waiting for the Iranians to get on the phone and start talking business to resolve the dangerous looming military crisis in the Persian Gulf.

Step One was for the US to pile on the threats of an unrelenting assault on the Islamic Republic. Step Two is for the US president to dangle an overture for dialogue with Tehran in order to avert war.

This week Donald Trump made a surprise announcement which appeared to knock back his hawkish White House team, declaring that he did not want the US to go to war with Iran. Instead, he said he hoped the Iranian leadership would engage in diplomatic talks.

Thats something of a turnaround, given that Trump has in the past heaped scorn on Iran as a terrorist regime and has pushed a policy of maximum pressure to throttle the countrys oil exports.

What were seeing here is not so much Trump exercising restraint on war hawks John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. Its more a transparent case of the president using his dubious skills of property dealing to achieve policy objective. The former real estate mogul is the supposed co-author of a best-selling book, The Art of the Deal, in which he sets out his genius for commercial success.
Theres not much art to it really. Trumps business success, which many people doubt as being real, seems to have revolved around buying low, selling high and screw as many people as you can along the way.

This may be why he steadfastly refuses to provide his tax returns for public inspection.

Trump seems to be applying that business formula to his dealings with Iran. Theres also echoes of it with regard to North Korea.

In the case of Iran, the White House uses the sales pitch of dangling the terror of massive military destruction combined with strangling economic lifelines. Then, it is reckoned, a little bit of reprieve as in an elusive offer of talks will make the Iranian customer get on their knees pleading concessions.

In other words, the whole military specter that the US has imposed on Iran recently is a bluff.

Trump has no intention of going to war with Iran and blowing his 2020 re-election chances. Its only meant to be part of his art of the deal to coerce Tehran to the negotiating table. Trump has made no secret that he hates the 2015 international nuclear accord with Iran signed by the Obama administration. He unilaterally cancelled US participation and wants Iran to renegotiate it, presumably to yield bigger concessions on nuclear and ballistic missile restrictions.

The trouble is that flogging properties in New York is not the same as international relations. Trump may have gotten his way by browbeating and cheating in real estate business, but that dont work in dealing with sovereign nations, especially one as strong and as proud as Iran.
Trump is out of his depth.

Wheeling and dealing does not appreciate history, international law and moral principle. How many times have we heard Trump bragging about the deal of the century with regard to solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, or the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula? Yet, Trumps braggadocio always falls on its face. Because treating sensitive, complicated historical problems like selling condos doesnt work.

So too with Iran. Trump seems to think that by threatening Iran, it will just roll over with a little inducement.

Its not going to happen. Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has adamantly said there will be no negotiations with the US over the nuclear accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It took several years of tortuous negotiations for that accord to be finalized in July 2015. It was signed off by the US, Iran, Russia, China and the European Union, and later ratified by the UN Security Council.

Iran made unprecedented concessions on its sovereign rights to nuclear power to enable the accord. It has also implemented its commitments flawlessly over the past four years, according to UN nuclear inspectors who are given unparalleled intrusive access to Irans defense facilities.
Trumps accusations against Iran of not complying with the JCPOA and of misusing finances to sponsor terrorism are based on the paranoid, hypocritical fantasies of Israeli and Saudi enemies of Iran.

The way forward is for all signatories to the nuclear accord to abide by it, as Russia and China have both advocated.

That means the Europeans in particular putting their money where their mouths are to implement legitimate business with Iran while repudiating American intimidation with sanctions. It also means the US sometime in the future respecting an international treaty which it signed up to.

Trump seems tohave a deluded sense ofhis own prowess. Some investigations have found that asa business magnate he actually lost more money (over $1 billion) thanhe ever supposedly made. Mr Trumpery President is not so much Artist ofthe Deal, asthe Con-artist.

His over-rated business acumen is being exposed likenever beforewith regard toIran.

The abominable thing is, however, that the buffoonish and criminal tactics ofusing military aggression asa negotiating tool may end uprazing swathes ofthe Middle East, killing countless innocents, and ultimately bringing the entire US house ofcards crashing down. So much forTrump the business genius.

The views and opinions expressed bythe speaker do not necessarily reflect those ofSputnik.

 

 
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