On Wednesday evening, as Donald Trump departed the White House to watch a performance of Les Misérables, members of the White House press corps raised another drama.
As reporters asked why the Department of State had ordered the sudden departure of non-essential embassy staff and their families from the Middle East, Trump simply said “you’ll find out soon” as he clambered aboard his armoured limousine, ‘The Beast’.
With multiple reports indicating that Israel has decided to take military action against Iran, Trump’s response only boosted speculation that the region will soon witness a military strike that the US publicly opposes, which could drag the region into further conflict.
CBS News reported that Trump was informed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of imminent Israeli action designed to derail ongoing talks between Washington and Tehran. If it goes ahead, an Israeli strike could add a new crimp to the relationship between the two leaders.
Two months ago, at a joint press appearance at the White House, Netanyahu fumed when Trump announced his intention to seek direct talks with Iran over its nuclear programme. Having pulled the US out of the internationally-backed Iran nuclear deal during his first term in office, Trump has pledged to secure a much tighter agreement with Tehran that permanently terminates Iran’s ambitions to become a nuclear weapons state.
But talks have stalled, and while the White House is sending Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Oman on Sunday, Trump told The New York Post this week that he is getting “less confident” about securing an agreement.
Trump’s rhetoric on Iran has run the gamut since his inauguration. Sometimes the gamut is on display during a single moment. In February, when he signed an Executive Order restoring Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, he described himself as “torn about” the paperwork on his desk.
“Everyone wants me to sign it. I’ll do that,” he said, before immediately insisting that he was “unhappy to do it”. On the one hand, he said, “we have to be strong and firm”. But of the threats contained in his order, he said: “I hope that it’s not going to have to be used in any great measure at all.”
At the same event, Trump claimed to have left “instructions” for Iran to be “obliterated” in the event that he is assassinated on Tehran’s orders. Last year, the Department of Justice indicted four men on charges of plotting to kill Trump before the election, and one of them said he had been ordered to carry out the assassination by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the country’s elite military unit.
“If they did that, they would be obliterated,” warned Trump, telling reporters “that would be the end”. In reality, it would fall to his successor to determine the level of response, if any, and no orders left by Trump would necessarily be followed.
Given Trump’s shifting statements, it would be reasonable for Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, to lack clarity about Washington’s precise position. Iranian leaders may also look at Trump’s failure to secure promised peace deals in Ukraine and in Gaza as fresh evidence that America’s leader over-promises and under-delivers whenever it comes to conflict resolution.
The Iranians are also still furious about the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the country’s most powerful military commander, killed in Baghdad on Trump’s orders by a U.S drone strike in September 2020.
Trump’s loss of confidence in the ongoing talks is also consistent with his general impatience whenever the complexities of peace-making override his determination to secure rapid, easily-negotiated deals.
He prides himself on being a president who has ended wars rather than started them, but when the going gets tough, Trump often portrays himself as ready to throw in the towel. Together with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, he has made multiple threats to abandon efforts to secure a 30-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, and now similarly appears ready to give up on Iran.
But if Israeli military action occurs, Iran may question whether the US relationship with Netanyahu is really as strained as some Washington analysts proclaim.
