Iran
How Trump Should Deal with Iran
Iran can make or break Trump’s Middle East withdrawals.
Donald Trump did not fuel anti-war sentiments among the American public, but he did channel them in a manner that few other Republican politicians had done before him. Over time, Trump’s embrace of these sentiments has made the notion that American troops should come home from the Middle East and that the United States should not get embroiled in any more wars there a core pillar of his “America First” foreign policy platform. If he wins the election in November, his approach to Iran may determine whether he will fulfill those promises to the American people or whether America will get even more embroiled in endless war in the Middle East.
Trump withdrew from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and replaced it with “maximum pressure” sanctions, ostensibly to force Iran to agree to a “better” deal. Despite Trump’s bombastic rhetoric and military threats against Tehran, his goal appears genuinely to have been to secure a new deal with Iran. On the campaign trail, he had repeatedly bashed Obama’s deal as the worst deal ever, not because it wouldn’t achieve its nuclear objectives, but because it only opened the Iranian market to European and Chinese companies, while keeping American companies out. “They bought 118 Airbus planes, not Boeing planes. They’re spending all of their money in Europe,” he argued in 2016. “It’s so unfair and it’s so incompetent.”
Trump wanted a deal that would allow him to build Trump Towers in Tehran, whereas Obama’s deal continued to keep business with Iran off limits to American companies.
But hav …