By any fair measure, Donald Trump’s policy toward Iran and the international nuclear agreement with Tehran was one of the most dramatic and consequential mistakes of his first term. The president’s own national security team told him in no uncertain terms that that policy was working as intended, and it was in the United States’ interest to leave it intact. But Trump abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) anyway.
By withdrawing from the multi-nation deal that was working effectively, for reasons he struggled to explain, the Republican inadvertently made Iran more dangerous and prompted an adversary to ramp up its nuclear program.
Now, however, Trump appears keenly interested in revisiting one of his most impactful failures. In fact, the White House has already initiated a series of preliminary talks with Iranian officials about a possible path forward. Now the problem isn’t just that the administration’s strategy is already breaking down, it’s also why the administration’s strategy is already breaking down. The New York Times reported:
In the past 24 hours, officials have left a contradictory and confusing set of messages, suggesting the administration might settle for caps on Iran’s activities — much as President Barack Obama did a decade ago — before backtracking on Tuesday.
For reasons that have never been explained, Trump has deployed Steve Witkoff to serve as the administration’s top negotiator with Iran. If his name sounds familiar, that’s because Witkoff is also helping lead the administration’s negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, despite the inconvenient fact that Witkoff is a New York real estate developer with no meaningful experience in foreign policy or delicate diplomacy.
This past weekend, the president’s envoy did, in fact, meet with Iran’s foreign minister in Oman, and Witkoff sounded quite optimistic after the discussion. In fact, as The Wall Street Journal reported, he appeared on Fox News earlier this week and talked about developing a “verification” system that might allow Iran to continue to keep producing low levels of uranium for a nuclear energy program.
That wasn’t an outrageous position to take. In fact, the original JCPOA was built on a verification system that allowed Iran to continue to keep producing low levels of uranium for a nuclear energy program. The framework that Trump’s envoy endorsed on Fox News was similar to the policy Barack Obama and his team created — and that Trump destroyed roughly seven years ago.
Complicating matters further, Witkoff’s position was wildly at odds with the White House national security advisor’s position: Michael Waltz recently insisted that the administration would demand that Iran, as part of any deal, had to abandon its facilities for enriching nuclear fuel altogether. “Full dismantlement,” Waltz said.
In other words, Trump’s lead negotiator with Iran and Trump’s White House’s national security advisor pushed two contradictory positions at around the same time.
In an apparent attempt to clarify matters, Witkoff published an item to social media in which he wrote, “A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal. Any final arrangement must set a framework for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Middle East — meaning that Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.”
Or put another way, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East went from disagreeing with the White House’s position to disagreeing with his own position.
The Times reported last week that the president’s principle goal isn’t just to strike a nuclear deal with Iran, it’s also to strike a nuclear deal with Iran better than the one Obama reached a decade ago. With those goals in mind, the Republican and his team are off to a rough start.
As for Trump’s recent saber-rattling, suggesting a possible U.S. military offensive if Iran fails to come to an agreement with the administration, I’m reminded of a tweet Trump published in 2013: “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly — not skilled.”