Analysis: Trump pulled in 2 directions on Iran, Nkorea
WASHINGTON — Just as Donald Trump reached one hand out to North Korea, he yanked the other back from Iran.
The president’s dramatic withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal was the most vivid illustration to date of how his impulses and capricious instincts tend to pull him in paradoxical directions. Presidents before have pursued conflicting approaches to tough issues, but rarely so overtly, and rarely in the course of a single speech.
He called Iran’s government a “regime of great terror” as he revealed that the U.S. would abandon the deal that it pushed for only three years ago. Then he announced that he’d sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang to lay the groundwork for Trump’s historic summit with the dictatorial Kim Jong Un, recently described by Trump as “very honorable.”
“Plans are being made, relationships are building, hopefully a deal will happen,” Trump said of his delicate rapprochement with North Korea. Speaking in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, he waxed optimistic that the U.S. could team up with allies and world powers so that “a future
of great prosperity and security can be achieved for everyone.”
That was precisely the game plan when the United States in 2015 brokered the landmark accord with Tehran. With painstaking persistence, Trump’s predecessor brought U.S. partners Britain, Germany and France together with rivals Russia and China to strike a deal in which Iran agreed to vigorous inspections and strict
nuclear limitations.
So what’s so different between the deal Trump walked away from Tuesday and the one he’s actively seeking with the North? The answer, by all appearances, can be summed up in two words: Barack Obama.
“Whatever Obama did, he wants to undo,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. He pointed out that Obama, in his final weeks, warned Trump
that North Korea was America’s top national security threat. “He’s going to solve it, because Obama couldn’t. Obama is proud of the Iran deal, so now Trump’s going to derail it.”
It’s an instinct that has been on display throughout Trump’s presidency: where Obama zigged, Trump will zag.
On the world stage, Trump moved quickly as president to pull the U.S. out of the Paris
climate agreement that Obama’s administration helped broker, abandoned Obama’s sweeping free-trade deal with Asia, and pulled back from the historic rapprochement with Cuba. His need to be seen as the anti-obama has continued closer to home as Trump has rolled back scores of environmental and other Obamaera regulations and took aim, again and again, at Obama’s signature health care law.