Diplomacy with a blunt instrument
This is what diplomacy by bludgeon looks like. You take a set of desired outcomes, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did when laying out the Trump administration’s new approach to Iran on Monday. Then you demand that the rest of the world fall in line until the results are in hand. Or else.
Washington might appear to believe that the sanctions it will impose unilaterally in the wake of the decision to abrogate the Iran nuclear deal will alone force a change of behaviour. However reluctantly, other world powers will be obliged to follow the US’s uncompromising stance — so this thinking goes. Iranian oil production will fall, export receipts will too and Iran will be cut off from the global financial system. As the economy stumbles, the clerical establishment will throw up a white flag and comply with all 12 “basic requirements” on Pompeo’s wish list.
The problem is that no one with knowledge of how the Iranian regime works thinks this will happen. They suspect the ultimate logic of Pompeo’s plan is to set the US and Iran on a path to war, foment regime change, or both.
The initial Iranian position is to reject the US demands wholesale and also, thankfully, to stick to the original deal. They have international cover, at least for now. The sanctions that forced Tehran to the table last time were supported not only by Europe but also by Russia and China. They were effective for that broad support. Tehran agreed to mothball its nuclear programme. The joint comprehensive plan of action that resulted was imperfect. But it dealt with the most pressing security threat: the regime’s rapidly approaching ability to build a nuclear bomb.
Iran may be able to weather sanctions better this time, given greater international leeway. But without the US, it will receive nothing of the upside of the nuclear deal, which held out the promise of revived investment. The temptation will be for Tehran to resume the race to build a bomb. Trump has set the US and Iran on a collision course. London, May 22