Trump's "Dangerous" Iran Policy

with Iran? One of the signature accomplishments, maybe the signature accomplishment of Barack Obama's administration in foreign policy, was a complex multi party deal between the United States and Iran that ultimately guaranteed that the United States would increasingly allow a normalization of international relations for Iran in exchange for

Iran holding back on its nuclear ambitions. Donald Trump came into office having intensely criticized that plan, and since then he's adopted a systematic strategy intended to put the screws on Iran. But what options does that leave Iran? In response to discuss this extremely pressing and worrisome topic, I'm thrilled to have with me. Vali Nasser Vali is a Middle East scholar, a foreign policy advisor, and a commentator

on international relations. From twenty and twelve until twenty nineteen, he was the dean of the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, and he was a special advisor before that in the Obama administration focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. There's nobody that I can think of better qualified to talk about these issues. VALI welcome, Thank you. So I want to start by asking you how bad do you think things are at this moment.

I think they are. They are bad largely because the President's strategy with their on at one level looks like very it's very clear. At another level it actually is somewhat rather less so. President Trump walked away from the nuclear deal and very successfully put a tremendous amount of pressure on Europeans, Chinese, Indians, Russians to stop trading with Iran and to try to crush Iran's economy. It wasn't

clear what the purpose is. He said, well, the purpose that the maximum pressure is to bring Iran to the table so that they would negotiate. His national security advisor and his Secretary of State seemed to be suggesting that the goal is something much bigger. You know, there words expelling Iran literally from Middle East, out of Iraq's area, Afhanistan, the Persian Gulf, Yemen, but even further, perhaps pushing for

regime change in Iran. Trump seems to be essentially talking from the both side of his mouth, escalating pressure very dangerously narrowing the field for diplomacy, and yet saying that he doesn't want war and he wants to talk. But in the meantime, he hasn't created any way in which the two sides can literally climb down from the tree and engage. In fact, Secretary Pompeo and President Trump as rhetorics, continuously makes it almost impossible to engage in any kind

of fruitful talks. So you mentioned, and I think you're completely right that the administration sounds like it has two different Iran policies. Trump says that he wants to do something very similar to the policy that he's tried to pursue with everybody else in the world, namely, up the pressure on them to get the renegotiation of some pre existing deal that he doesn't like. And you know, that's Trump talking about NAFTA, that's Trump talking about trade with China,

that's Trump talking about North Korea. I mean, that's just his If he has a vision of how to do things in life, that's the vision. But that, of course, as you say, implies actual deal making at the end of the process. And then you have the Bolton Pompeo view, which, as you say, sometimes seems like it's even varying to the point of calling for regime change, where the punchline is not we talk to you. The punchline is the opposite, We want you to come, we want you to be

to be brought down. Now, I want to ask whether that incoherence is seen in in your mind as genuine incoherence. Is it the result of just Trump thinking something different from what is national security advisor and his secretary of

State think, or is it more sophisticated than that. Is it a kind of two pronged approach where Trump knows that the hard line from Bolton and Pompeo strengthens his threat, makes him more credible as a threat, and hopes that he can then say to the Iranians, Look, you know, I have to deal with my Secretary of State of my national security advisor, so I have to stay tough with you, but look, I will intervene and do a

deal with you. Do so, do you think the US side is incoherent or that Trump is crazy like a fox? I think increasingly over the past two years, people have come to let's say the Iranians have come to conclude that it's incoherence that ultimately Trump has one agenda, which is to have talks. He says he doesn't want war, and then he's employed people who essentially are pursuing a

very different strategy. And then, you know, the Iranians compare notes with the North Koreans, and the North Korean assumptions is the same that you can go in a room and make any kind of an agreement with Trump, you

come out and Pompeo and Bolton shredded to pieces. So the Iranians have come to see that, yes, Trump doesn't want war, but even if you met with Trump and you had an agreement, how does this go forward when the people who are in charge of actually carrying the ball forward after the principles as we call him, that the sort of heads of government's meet actually have no desire for this to work, and Trump doesn't seem to be able to rein him in. So now let's tack

to the side of the Iranian perspective. So you're dealing imagine that you're, you know, advising the Iranian government, and the Iranian government is dealing with a government in the United States that has two different approaches that are in contradiction with each other, and it can't really expect that any true deal is going to come out. There won't be, as you say, shredded by Bolton and Pompeo. So what's

the wisest strategy for Iran to pursuer? What can Iran do faced with that set of circumstances and added to that the part that is having a huge effect on them, namely the significant crackdown on their trading capacities. First, let me backtrack. So when Trump came out of the nuclear deal, the Iranians didn't really react in a big way. There was no uptick in anything in particular. They adopted something

they call a strategic patients. So let's see, they's waited out and hopefully the Europeans, Chinese and the Russians will be able to create enough trade to just keep things going and you could kick the ball down the road. The Europeans didn't come through. Maximum pressure proved to be extremely effective, and the Iranians decided that that the statusco

is generally not sustainable. I mean Trump is perfectly free to escalate pressure every five months six months, and the Europeans and Chinese, Russians, Indians make you growl, but they're just going to go along with the American pressure and eventually this can either break the regime or it's going to lead to war or something worse. So how do you break the impast And you can do it in

two ways. You could basically show up for talks and you hope that that actually would create a wedge between Bolton Pompey on the one side and Trump on the other, or that you can actually escalate in kind, bring it to the brink of war, hoping that that also would create a wedge between national security advisors who are happy to go to war and Trump, who really doesn't want

to go to war. The first scenario I think the Iranians decided was not for them because, unlike North Korea, they actually don't have a nuclear weapon, so they don't have much to bargain with the US right now. Whatever they had they cashed it in to get the deal

with Obama. Secondly, they do have domestic politics, and Trump and Pompeio have left very little room for anybody in Iran to be able to come to the table given the rhetoric coming out of Washington and Thirdly, the irun Is also understand that, unlike North Korea, there is a very entrenched and powerful anti Iran and anti talking to Iran lobby in the United States, perhaps even led by Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahoo, who is very opposed to this idea,

and that Trump, you know, they could end up meeting with Trump. Trump gets this photo opportunity, but there's not going to be much American appetite for actually doing something, so this is not really the time to talk. On the other hand, they decided that if you escalate, if you hit tankers, if you shot an down an American drone, if you also talked about war, you will force Trump

to actually confront the consequences of his policy. And that would also force first of all, would put it on at a much higher level on his radar so that he would actually pay attention to what his minions are doing. And secondly, that he would create a wedge. And I think they running strategy has worked. So when they shut down the American drone, which was a very expensive drone flying at thirty five thousand feet, they showed that they both have the audacity essentially to push for what might

end up in war. But also they have capability to inflict a lot of pain if the United States ended up in war with Iran. And also I think they signaled to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, America's allies in the Gulf, that they will take the war to them as well, and therefore this can get really ugly. And I think

they running conclusion was that this paid off. Trump came to the edge of making a decision to punish it on for shooting down the drone, and then decided to walk back, and that opened the wedge between him and his national security team, head of CIA, national Security Advisor, Secretary of State, all of whom had favored America flexing its muscles in response to the shooting down of the drone.

So I think the Iranians see benefit in enforcing Trump to think seriously about something other than maximum pressure bringing Iran to the table, which is actually what Iran needs. If it is to countenance coming to the table, it needs the United States to give it some economic benefits, relief some of the economic pressure. So the Iranians could even tell their own population that talks is not surrender,

but rather they're getting something in exchange. For showing up for talks, and also that Trump would probably have to change his the team that's going to talk to Iran, and we already saw that he toyed with the idea of Rand Paul playing the role of an envoy. Right. I am skeptical that Trump will do can do all of this in an election year, but the Iranians may have at least bought themselves time until after November twenty twenty to see where we go from there. I think

that's right. And you know what I would like to do is try to break it into a simple part and a complicated part. The simple part seems to me that by shooting down the drone, the Iranians basically said to Trump, we're calling your bluff. Are you actually prepared to use force against us? And it worked because Trump whimped out, you know. I mean, one might think that was a good thing or a bad thing, but from their perspective, Trump did not retaliate in the end. That

to me seems like the straightforward part. The complicated part, and it's almost mind bendingly complicated, is so now you're Iran and you know that although Trump's foreign policy advisors are going to keep telling him that he should use force against Iran, He's almost certainly not going to do it.

He doesn't want actual violence, but he does want to stick with the weaking of Iran via economic sanctions, and maybe that arrangement is one that he's perfectly happy to continue, and maybe even his advisers are happy to continue it. And from Iran's perspective, there's not much obvious that you can do in response. And this is really the crux of what I'm trying to understand from the Iranian perspective.

I mean, if they know that Trump is not likely to compromise with them on the trade sanctions that are hurting them so much, and they also know that he's probably not going to use violence, what benefit do they have in continuing to up the ante. They probably don't have that much benefit. That they probably need to just try to survive. Isn't that sort of the best strategy available to them in that moment. Well, in the short run,

that's the case. But I don't think the Iranians can sustain this situation for four years if Trump gets reelected, So I think at some point in time they would have to take the idea of talking to Trump seriously. But what if he just doesn't want to talk. What if he actually wants to say about talk about talking,

but Trump actually doesn't want to talk. I mean, one thing that you have to keep in mind about Trump, I think, and I'm sure the Iranians do think about this, is he doesn't do foreign policy the way you and I were brought up to think about foreign policy, where you know, we were taught and we teach our students choose your objective and then find the rational strategy to pursue your objective. But Trump doesn't always do it that way.

Sometimes he just wants a perception to be created out there, say, a perception of toughness aimed primarily to domestic audience. And you know, his only constraint is he doesn't want to be in a war. Then he does want to look tough, and so in that sense, he's not very clearly pursuing an objective. You know, you might give him a low grade if he were teaching him in foreign policy, but it doesn't matter. He's the president of United States and

this is the policy that he's pursuing. Well, that's exactly why this becomes very dangerous because ultimately you have to say, Okay, what are Iran's options if Trump doesn't want to talk

to them and he just wants to apply pressure. So either they have to say voluntarily we're going to dismantle the regime, which is not likely to happen, right, or that they actually, you know, go down the path of trying to force Trump to choose between war and diplomacy, so they get it to a point that even hanging tough would mean that he has to go to war with Iran or that he has to talk to them. So in a way, you could say, the tables get turned.

So it's Trump that was originally putting maximum pressure to get them to the table, and it could become Iran that's putting maximum pressure on Trump to come to the table. And I think that's exactly why the way in which Trump does foreign policy is so dangerous, because you know, he plays with fire without actually wanting to use force

when it comes to it. I think the point that you're making, Valley is is hugely significant, and I think I don't think it's been made clearly enough in the minds at least of most Americans, even those who followed foreign policy pretty closely. So let me say it. Say it back to you and see if you tell me

if I'm getting it right. What I hear you saying is that by pursuing this policy, Trump hasn't really taken into account that he may push Iron to the point where it feels it has to provoke a war, it has to come very very close to provoking a war, maybe actually provoke a war, just in order to get Trump to negotiate and there by to put the power in there on their side. And I guess the question I have for you there is is that plausible from

me Iron's perspective? I mean, wouldn't a war? Of course they could inflict damage on American allies, They could inflict damage on the United States, They could inflict damage on Israel and on Saudi Arabia and on the UAE. But could they survive a genuine war? And if they couldn't, then how much are they going to be willing to risk going down that path? Well, you know, the dilemma that Trump has created is that if you give Iran only bad choices, they're going to pick one of the

bad choices. I mean, you know, I don't see this region voluntarily dismantling. And now it's sort of a body into the idea that you could force Trump to blink, so they can go down that path of trying to have him blink again and again, and they may make a mistake or go one step too far and actually end up getting a war. I think, you know, the irony here is that neither the United States, or at least neither Trump nor Iran want war right but there

is no room right now for anything else. You know, as the Trump says the pathway to talks are there, but that's not really the case. And therefore, you know, the sort of the Iranians have very few options left before them other than basically sitting and watching their country come apart. And there are those within Iran's hardliners who argued that, look, if we're going to end up in a war with the United States, it's better we do it now when we're still strong, than do it twenty

years from now. Has happened with Saddam, where nothing is left of our institutions. And I think, you know, if Trump gets reelected, the Iranians have to look at four more years of the same policy, and then they have to sort of calculate can they survive four more years of the same thing, where every six months Trump keeps escalating, or are they going to really force, you know, try to force their way out of this situation. Either by

there are two ways of doing it. They audaciously give him an offer of talks that that he can't refuse and I don't see that happening under this supreme leader. Or they have to force Trump to really think about the fact that the danger of war is imminent and he needs to find a way out. So I want to ask about what this means for moderates in Iran. I mean, you describe the position that the hardliners take, namely, betterify the war now when we have real leverage, then

at some later time. If you're an Iranian moderate and you supported the deal with Obama and you thought that Rohanni had done a good job by brokering that deal, now do you have a leg to stand on. I mean, I have moderates in Iran just been completely discredited by the rise of the Trump policy. Yes, I think that's one of the that's one of the tragedies of Trump's policy towards Iran. So all the moderates have either been

marginalized or have been radicalized. Even the moderates are trying to distance themselves from the nuclear deal, and in fact, even in the past year, there was hope that still the Moderates could sustain themselves if Europe actually had stood up to Trump and tried to protect doing business with Iran even at the risk of sanctions. And Europe folded completely.

There was no appetite in Europe in any way to do something through central banks or governments and actually do business with Iran in a way that would keep the nuclear deal genuinely alive, so that the moderates really don't have anything to offer. And I think some presidential elections, parliamentary elections, they're going to be completely sidelines. And in a way, in an ironic way, Trump has achieved regime

change in Iran, except the wrong regime change. He's handed Iran to militaristic hardliners who would be now very difficult to dislodge going forward. I wanted to ask about the Europeans and why they did fold so immediately and completely.

You know, when when the obaministration was putting the finishing touches on the Iran Deal, one of the structures that seemed to be actually desirable was that even if the United Dates were to back out of the deal in a future administration, it was still nominally up to Europe to continue to make its own judgment about whether Iran had renected on the deal and therefore to continue trade.

And the theory at the time many people believe this, I certainly thought it at the time was that this was a good failsafe measure in the deal that even if the United States backed out, it wouldn't really matter the United States had backed out because Iran could still do business with Europeans. But as you noted, the Trump administration applied some pressure and the Europeans completely backed down.

Why is that just because they have so many of their own worries about Trump that they don't want to annoy him about Iran or is it based on any actual attitude towards Iran. I think they may hide behind attitude towards Iran, like you know, because Iran has missiles or his bola, this makes it difficult for us to

abide by the nuclear deal. But but the reality of it is that Trump showed with Europe that the emperor has no clothes, you know, as the Europeans have no will of their own and there are not really independent international actors. That Europe, for all practical purposes, is a vestige of American foreign policy, even though Trump looks down on Europe and likes to weaken Europe, but in reality has also shown that Europeans really are not independent of

US foreign policy. Now, this has much broader implications. It's not about Iran. If you're China, if you're Russia, if you're any other country around the world sitting and watching this, you basically come to the same conclusion that you know, if there is an international deal that the Europeans step in and say, well, you're we're the brokers, as a big unit in international affairs, as protectors of rule of law, multilateralism. We're going to put our name to this deal. It's meaningless.

And one of the outcomes of this entire thing is that Trump has basically shredded European legitimacy and shown Europe to be vassals of the United States. And that has broad implications if you would, for the great power rivalry that is likely to unfold going forward between Russia, China,

and the United States. And again, I think a folly of Trump's foreign policy is that if that's really the case, if it's really the big game of big power is between you and China and Russia, it always would have benefited the United States to have Europe as a foil, as a fourth partner there that looks like, you know, is an independent actor, and then you know, would benefit

the United States interests. By completely shredding Europe's credibility, Trump has ended up i think, weekend in America's hand internationally because the Europeans won't matter to the great power rivalry anymore. Well, I wanted to also ask you about a really interesting piece that you wrote where you argued in The Atlantic that Trump's Iran policy is a gift to China. That's not intuitive at all, and you make a pretty complex and interesting argument. So I wonder if you would just

describe that argument. Well, you know, we we often when we think about China and rivalry with China, we only think about East Asia in the vestige of America's old thinking that we think of China as a pacific power. China is increasingly a continental power. Its interests are moving westwards.

It's even population and industries are moving westwards. And the entire idea of the new sale crowd that Shishimping has put on the table, or the Belt and Road as it's more popularly known, is the one that would connect

Asia to Africa and then to Europe. I mean, the Chinese have a conception of Eurasia, which is essentially from eastern China all the way to Ireland, as being a zone of influence, economic influence for the Chinese, and the Middle East and Iran are big pieces in the middle of this, and the Chinese have been pushing into the Middle East, into Saudi Arabia, into UAE, into Pakistan, into Afghanistan,

and into Iran in a big way. And the United States sort of conducts policy with Iran and the Middle East as if we are still in the Bush era? What is the United States is the only outside actor that matters, and increasingly when it comes to diplomacy, nowadays, Russians are the ones that matter. And when it comes to economics, it's the Chinese that matter. And ultimately, if the United States going to contain China, it would have to contain it globally, not just with trade or in

the eastern part of China in the Pacific. It has to think about how do you contain China's influenced in the Middle East, and how do you make sure that the Chinese don't become or the Iranians don't become essentially an extension of China's foreign policy and China's economic policy, and isolation of Iran from the West essentially eventually turn

irund in the direction of China. The Chinese will end up developing Iran's gas fields one now that total left, they will end up developing Iran's infrastructure, Iran's oil fields. And even now, the Chinese are perhaps the only ones that are continuing to buy Irani aoid. You know, you're making decisions about Iran without thinking about the broader ramifications of what this means for the bigger fight against China.

And I think another thing that we're not paying attention to is that as we're isolating Iran, the Russians are deepening their strategic partnership with Iran. Yeah, and that means that Iran and Russia in Syria have built a deep state to deep state relationship, intelligence, security, military relationship. They have successfully prosecuted a war jointly. We may think, oh, they don't like each other, they don't agree their interests are different. That is, looking at the glass as half

empty half full. Sight of it it is now you have close to a decade of very successful military intelligence cooperation that extends to now increasingly meetings between Revolutionary Guard commanders and Russian FSB and military commanders, coordination of policy on Afghanistan, for instance, between Iran and Russia, coordination of policy on Syria. And Iran, because it no longer has absolutely any relationship with the United States, it's kind of

a potential future base for Russia. I mean, you could see the Russians may think that ten years from now they may be selling Iran advanced military aircraft s, four hundred missiles of the kind that's just sold Turkey. They may get basis in Iran. And the United States is not only handing over Iran to China economically and weakening China's competitors in Asia by cutting them out of Iran, but it's actually ending Iran over to Russia as well.

And so the Russians don't want war, but the Russians are very happy to see Iran alienated from the West because in the future the only place Iran will have to go will be to Russia. Well, I think that's a good summary really of your analysis, Valley. I mean Trump's approached generally by isolating and alienating Iran first, gives Iranians an incentive to up the ante and look to war, and that might involve a situation where we actually get

into a war with Iran. As a fallback to that, we're pushing Iran into China's arms economically and into Russia's arms militarily. If there's a more thoroughgoing condemnation of a foreign policy than that, I can't really imagine it. So I'm very grateful to you for that very penetrating and thoughtful analysis. I think it's a wake up call to think about how this relationship is developing. And if Trump is reelected, it seems as though there's a high problem

that that's the direction which which things will go. I think it's hard to see a likely mid course correction from Trump on those things. So here, again, as on many other issues, so much depends on what happens in our next election exactly. Let's hope for the best. Let's hope for the best. Thank you so much for I really appreciate your time and your insight. Thank you as good being with you since I talked to Valinasser. John Bolton has actually left his post as National Security Advisor,

which leads me to our Sound of the Week. Bolton was on the guidance to be here, so we're YouTube blindsided by what occurred today that he's no longer with the administration. Was it news to you today because last night you were. I'm never surprised that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not a close friend of the outgoing National Security Advisor, answering questions from reporters at a press conference he held with Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchen on Tuesday, right

after John Bulton's departure was made public. Now it is unclear whether Bolton resigned or was fired. It depends on who you believe. Trump tweeted that he had fired Bolton. Bolton tweeted that he had offered his resignation voluntarily either way, and honestly, who really cares. Here are my thoughts on what the departure means for US foreign policy at large. The hiring of John Bolton was, from the beginning a

very strange thing for Donald Trump to have done. Donald Trump did not run as a neo conservative, the kind of politician who thinks the United States should promote global interests in democracy and human rights by force if necessary. Instead, he ran as a kind of isolationist and as someone who said that he liked to do deals economically, not

to fight wars. Indeed, since becoming president, Donald Trump has been notably cautious about using force in almost any place around the globe, including under circumstances when most prior presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, probably would have at least fired

off some missiles. So it was very, very surprising when he hired in John Bolton, a national security advisor who was well known within the George W. Bush administration, not to mention the earlier administrations he worked for as being the most pro intervention, the most shoot him up, the

most aggressive guy in the entire administration. Sure, Trump had heard Bolton talking tough on Fox News, but the kind of tough talking that Bolton was doing was not an obvious fit for the policies that Trump was trying to adopt. The consequence of having a national security advisor whose policy approach was so different from the presidents was not what you might imagine for meeting dars Kern's Goodwin's team of rivals.

This was not Donald Trump as Abraham Lincoln, trying to balance the impulses that he himself might have against different impulses of thoughtful members of his advisory group, so that they would balance each other. Hear different opinions and read some moderate middle To the contrary, Trump just continued to run foreign policy his own way, while Bolton made every effort to rein him in. The President would meet with the president of North Korea, and John Bolton would try

to undercut the meeting. At one moment. In order for Trump to actually cross into North Korea, Bolton had to be sent off on a mission to Mongolia. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. The effect of this, and you heard this in my conversation with Bali, is that countries around the world are trying to figure out what is the policy of the United States under circumstances when the President and the National Security Advisor are aiming

in what appeared to be almost exactly opposite directions. A president who no longer is burdened by a national secure advisor who is contradicting him would ordinarily be a good thing. It would ordinarily mean that the president would not have to spend his time arguing with his chief foreign policy adviser. It would also ordinarily mean that other countries trying to suss out what US policy is would not have to spend their time on the palace intrigue of conflict and contradiction.

The question is, when the president is Donald Trump, does greater clarity of his foreign policy make us think the United States will be better off than it was otherwise. To be sure, I am not saying that it would have been better if John Bolton had gotten his way. His aggressive policies have a reasonable probability of getting the United States into violent confrontations that it frankly does not need,

at least not in my view. So it's not really a question of whether Bolton's policies would have been better than Trump's in every instance. Rather, it's a question of whether Trump is a better president and I use those words in scare quotes when he's being constrained and limited by anyone who disagrees with him, then he is. When

he's following his own impulses, whatever those may be. My own view is that despite the enormous costs of having a national security advisor and a president whose views were so fundamentally opposed, there was an accidental side benefit. And the accidental side benefit was that a president whose national security advisor disagree with him couldn't do much of anything.

And when it comes to Donald Trump and foreign policy, the best outcome with the world can hope for, the best outcome the United States can hope for is that we do no harm. The less the president can do, the fewer agreements he can reach, the fewer wars he can enter. The less the president can do, the safer we all are. And I don't mean just we Americans,

I mean we people who live in the world. So when I say that it's a bit of a sad thing that John Bolton is no longer the National Security Advisor, believe me, I'm not saying a single good thing about John Bolton. What I'm saying is that if Trump were to manage his own foreign policy unconstrained and unlimited, the random walk of his impulses and approaches could potentially endanger everybody. Departure of John Bolton is not the kind of event that makes you weep or cry for the man who's

left his job. On the other hand, it does make me just a little bit more nervous for what's going on with foreign policy in the United States. Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Geancott, with engineering by Jason Gambrell and Jason Rostkowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Loebell. I'm Noah Feldman. You can

follow me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. This is Deep Background.