Con Coughlin
Kim Jong-un has shown a desire to end confrontation – unlike the increasingly hostile regime in Tehran
Now that Donald Trump has agreed a deal – of sorts – with North Korean President Kim Jong-un, all that remains is for the US president to resolve the other outstanding security challenge facing his administration, namely Iran.
After all, in terms of the respective military capabilities of the two rogue states, North Korea represented by far the greater challenge. The North Koreans have already developed a number of nuclear warheads, whereas the Iranians – so far as we know – have still to make the technological breakout that would provide the ayatollahs with a nuclear weapons arsenal.
The North Korean missile system, to judge from the regime’s recent tests, also appears more advanced. There have, of course, been a number of credible reports over the years that Pyongyang and Tehran have been cooperating closely on various aspects of their nuclear and missile development programmes, so it is entirely feasible that Iran has reached a similar level of technological know-how as the North Koreans. The only difference may be that the Iranians have managed to conceal their achievements from the prying eyes of the outside world.
The big difference, though, between the two regimes – as Mr Trump’s breakthrough with his North Korean opposite number in Singapore has demonstrated – is that, with North Korea, you have a leadership that appears genuinely committed to resolving its long-standing confrontation with Washington by peaceful means. As Mr Kim remarked following his historic encounter with Mr Trump: “We decided to leave the past behind.”
Unfortunately, so far as Iran is concerned, the opposite is the case. The first problem is that it has never been clear to Western policymakers who is in charge of the Islamic republic. Should they be dealing with country’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, the divinely appointed guarantor of the Iranian revolution, or the democratically elected government of President Hassan Rouhani?
But the real issue is whether anyone in Tehran has any serious inclination to settle Iran’s differences with the US and its allies. The ill-fated nuclear deal in which former US president Barack Obama invested so much political capital was supposed to lay the foundations of a new era of international cooperation on the part of the Iranians. Instead, the regime saw the deal as an opportunity to expand Iran’s malign influence throughout the Arab world.
Nor has Tehran given any signal that it has a desire to engage with the Trump administration after the president’s decision to withdraw from the agreement. On the contrary, the regime responded by intensifying its anti-american rhetoric, with Mr Khamenei announcing earlier this month that Iran would now increase the productivity of its centrifuges, machines that are capable of producing weapons-grade uranium.
Iran has also intensified its efforts to develop its global terrorist network. Derek Maltz, the former head of the US Department of Justice’s Special Operations Division, told an audience of senior Arab diplomats in London yesterday that the Iranian-backed militia Hizbollah was now involved in a multi-billion dollar global drug smuggling racket, with a significant percentage of the funds being diverted to finance terrorist operations in the Arab world and beyond.
These are not the actions of a country that is interested in ending its long-standing hostility to the West. Its attitude will not be lost on the hawks in the Trump administration such as John Bolton, the National Security Advisor, who are itching to teach the ayatollahs a lesson.
About the only way a major confrontation between the US and Iran can be averted now will be if other signatories to the nuclear deal – countries such as Britain, France and Germany – can prevail on Washington to take a more measured approach. This prospect seems highly unlikely following the tetchy scenes that dominated last weekend’s G7 summit in Quebec, with Mr Trump finding himself at loggerheads with European leaders on issues from trade tariffs to Nato funding.
This president is clearly in no mood to take lectures from anyone, be they traditional allies in Europe or longstanding enemies in Iran. And, buoyed by the success of his Singapore summit, Mr Trump will be even more determined to close the Iran file once and for all.
All of which means the ball is very much in the Iranians’ court. They have the option of continuing to provoke Washington with threats to intensify their nuclear activities, while persisting with their terrorism funding. Or they could be smart and follow Mr Kim’s example by seeking to de-escalate tensions with America.
The Iranians have been here before when, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, they quietly dismantled their nuclear weapons programme. They would be welladvised to take a similar approach now – or face the consequences. FOLLOW Con Coughlin on Twitter @concoughlin; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion