After years of trashing his predecessor’s engagement with Iran, Trump found himself echoing key elements of the Obama approach to avoid creating another front in America’s Middle East wars
President Donald Trump started with over-the-top, machismo rhetoric toward Iran. He ended by backing down so far that he sounded more like his predecessor.
“The president narrowly avoided a needless war today,” said Wendy Sherman, the former under secretary of State for political affairs under President Barack Obama and the lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal. “The president is both the arsonist and the fireman. He set the world on flames when he left the JCPOA and then when he decided to kill Qassem Soleimani. Now, he wants to be the fireman and say, ‘I put this all out. It was President Obama who caused all of the problems.
“I worry there might be more provocations by Iran,” said Fred Fleitz, who served as national security adviser John Bolton’s chief of staff and now leads the Center for Security Policy. “Although I think yesterday was a show-of-force gesture by the Iranians, I think they’re still going to push proxies to conduct acts of revenge and it may spark some difficult decisions for the president on how he might respond.
Time and time again, Trump has made a bold or controversial policy move only to later back down or reverse entirely. It occurred with 2019’s government shutdown over additional funding for the border wall, his desire to smack China with severe tariffs, his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from parents as they crossed into the U.S. and his sudden move to withdraw American troops from Syria.
Trump is getting what “he wanted to do all along, which is to get into a negotiating position. Now he’s got their own foreign minister saying they’re ready to do that,” Inhofe said. “He’s in a good position. I know there are a lot of people that think that he‘s got to go in there and go for that blood and all that. Why do that? He’s already won.”
And they say that the U.S. is in a worse position than it is a week ago. As Sen. Martin Heinrich put it, “I worry that President Trump’s legacy will be a nuclear-armed Iran.”
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