What Does Trump Want from Iran?
- Karl Johansson
- för 15 timmar sedan
- 3 min läsning
The US is negotiating with Iran and threatening it without seeming to have figured out what it is asking for. That's asking for trouble.
Trump’s reputation as a deal maker is solid even if his track record is less so. While there are many deals in the making, perhaps the most dramatic one is the potential deal with Iran. The US has sent scores of warships to the Middle East to put pressure on Teheran to make a deal. What the parties want from each other is a little vague, but Trump’s deals are often more style than substance.
I think there is a real risk of a war if the US decides to bomb Iran again, as it did last summer. The Iranian revolutionary regime has been through the humiliating ordeal of having its nuclear programme bombed by Israel and the US, and having to kill thousands of domestic protestors in the last year. Teheran cannot afford to show weakness, which means that if it is forced to act it is likely to overreact. Doubly so given that Trump backed the anti-government protestors, if only rhetorically.
Trump is well known for his aversion to foreign entanglements, but his advisors and allies do not always share that view. There is a risk that Israel or Marco Rubio or some other party convinces Trump that an attack on Iran would be a good thing, and an easy win. Perhaps the success MAGA-world had in the operation to kidnap Venezuelan president Maduro has made them overconfident.
It is important to note that Venezuela was a one off thing. Delcy Rodriguez or someone else in the regime had already sold out Maduro, otherwise the kidnapping would not have been so smooth. There are no indications that something similar is possible in Iran. And even if it was, Iran is so much further away than Venezuela with much more difficult regional and domestic politics that keeping the Iranian Delcy Rodriguez in line would be much more difficult. Of course, Trump and his court are unpredictable, and just because something is a bad idea does not mean they won’t try it; there’s a long list of unadvisable ideas which have become official White House policy like ICE raids and global tariffs.
What does inspire hope in a peaceful settlement is that the US’ demands are so unclear. Trump has not said what he hopes to gain from his threats and talks with Iran, and so the groundwork is not laid for a lasting military conflict; there is no casus belli. Whatever the Iranians can offer Trump can thus be spun to be a great victory: “I didn’t tell you guys but [whatever concession Teheran agrees to] was the goal all along”.
I don’t think Trump will attack Iran. But if he does, I think it will be more of a quagmire than he or anyone else in Washington expects. It is the most dangerous kind of conflict to engage in for the US, one in which it has no clear goal and where the adversary is far more determined than the US is.
If you liked this post you can read a previous post about the war in Ukraine here or the rest of my writings here. I also have a section for longer reads I call essays here, I particularly recommend my series called The Bird & The Technoking exploring Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, and its political and cultural implications. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!
I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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Cover photo by aboodi vesakaran from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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