THE IRAN RUNAROUND. Last Wednesday, President Donald Trump told reporters that talks to end the Iran war were going “very well,” so well that they might result in an agreement in a few days. “I mean, if it happens — it might not happen, who knows? But if it happens, it could happen over the weekend,” the president said.
At that point, Trump made one of those comments that are both sharply funny and sadly true. When a reporter asked him how he defined the word “ceasefire” — that is, the situation that exists now between the United States and Iran — Trump said, “Pretty much the way it is. It’s a different part of the world. You know, I’d say in that part of the world, ‘ceasefire’ is when you’re shooting in a more moderate manner.”
On Friday, taping an interview that would air on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Trump said, “We’re very close to having a deal. And if we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it one way or the other,” meaning the U.S. would use military force to settle the issue. “Either way, we win.” Still, Trump held out hope for the talks. “We’re having very good negotiations with the people that are leading the country now,” he said. “It’s the third group that we’ve been dealing with. And they are different. You could say it’s regime change, actually, because these are very different people. I find them to be more rational, very smart.”
Not long after Trump spoke, his “shooting in a more moderate manner” joke was disproved when Iran and U.S. partner Israel engaged in a bout of non-moderate shooting. Israel attacked Beirut. Iran attacked Israel. Israel attacked Iran. It all seemed to make a joke of the word “ceasefire,” as when the Wall Street Journal reported with a straight face that it was “a tumultuous day of renewed violence in the Middle East that tested a fragile ceasefire.”
Trump was clearly irritated with Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding that the Israeli prime minister not retaliate against Iran for fear of messing up the delicate peace talks. Then, when Netanyahu went ahead and retaliated anyway, Trump called on both sides to “immediately stop shooting.” Trump then told the Financial Times that Netanyahu will have to accept whatever peace deal Trump comes up with because Netanyahu “won’t have any choice. I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots.”
As the frustrations mounted, the prospect of any imminent agreement in the talks went away. Again. How many times has Trump said a deal was close, that it might be coming in the next few days, only to have it not happen at all? Too many to count at this point. Of course, the president wants to seem positive about the negotiations. But the last few days have again made it clear that 1) Iranian leaders do not think they need to make an agreement now and have the freedom to jerk the U.S. around; and 2) Israel does not have the same aims for the war that the U.S. has.
A more detailed look at the frustrations the U.S. faces in Iran came earlier in the week from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Testifying before several congressional committees, Rubio took questions from lawmakers for the first time since the start of the Iran war more than three months ago. His testimony was a master class in how difficult it has become for the Trump administration to settle the war.
Rubio began with some good news. “For the first time, certainly in my memory, they [Iran] have agreed to negotiate aspects of their nuclear program that just a month ago, or just a year ago, they were refusing to even mention, much less enter into discussions about.”
But Rubio could not be certain, or even very optimistic, that the change in Iran’s approach will lead to a final agreement. “That is not a guarantee that ultimately it will lead to a deal that is acceptable to the Senate or acceptable to the American people,” Rubio said. “But we’ll be able to engage them in a process to truly test the proposition of how far they’re willing to go.”
When a leading U.S. official describes the peace talks as “a process” to find out “how far [Iran] is willing to go” — that’s not a terribly encouraging state of affairs.
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Rubio also stressed how hard it is to conduct negotiations with the Iranians. “Talks with Iran are not like talks with Switzerland,” he said. “They’re very different. They require the use of intermediaries, unfortunately.” Beyond that, the Iranian regime is a mess at the moment, after Israel and the U.S. killed dozens of leaders, including the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Complicating that process, unfortunately, is their internal regime is somewhat fractured in the sense that it takes days to get responses from their system,” Rubio explained.
Put it all together, and the effort to end the war in Iran might be described as a slow-moving muddle. No wonder they seem promising at one moment and useless the next. And as far as Iran is concerned, if it wants to drag the U.S. along in a process that keeps the Americans off-balance and never quite comes together in a resolution, so far, it is succeeding.