During a press conference with Italy’s prime minister, Pres. Trump was asked if he would meeting with Iran’s Pres. Hassan Rouhani. In a typically slipshod, extemporaneous response he said: Sure, I’ll meet him anytime without conditions. This response probably caused a 5-alarm fire in John Bolton’s NSA and Mike Pompeo’s State Department, since both have been advocating military assault and regime change against Iran for years. In fact, shortly after Trump strayed from the neocon reservation big-time, Pompeo shape-shifted Trump’s offer into a highly-conditional one which essentially obliterated it.
But they needn’t worry: Trump isn’t likely to get his meeting; nor will it amount to much even if he does. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, was urged to meet with Trump by his Chinese patron. Iran has no similar patron. It is an independent agent. And Ayatollah Khameini, who calls the shots, does not suffer fools gladly. He will see no reason to meet Trump.
Iran is used to decades worth of meaningless blather from various U.S. administrations, interspersed with aggressive acts against it. Khamenei will see no need to hear more blather from a clueless Trump, someone who will neither understand Iran, nor the history of tempestuous relationship it has endured with the U.S.
But on the off-chance that Khamenei does agree to such a summit, what will Trump offer? Will he end sanctions? Will he lessen regional tensions with Iran’s enemies, the Saudis and Israelis? Will he normalize relations with Iran? No, to all these questions.
What will Trump want or expect from Iran? An end to support for Syria and Hezbollah. Iranian withdrawal from Syria and Lebanon. An end to its ballistic missile development program. A guarantee it will not resume its nuclear program. Loosening of the reins on Iran’s domestic opposition. All reasonable issues to raise. But what will he give in return? Nothing. Both because his aides won’t permit it nor will his own Party in Congress. That’s even if he wanted to do these things.
This is what characterizes the foreign policy, if it can be called that, of the Trump administration: wild gambits followed by utter confusion, repudiation, and stasis. Wild swings of hope followed by abject failure and disappointment. All this might be survivable if it didn’t promise an eventual disaster. When you offer hope to a region that is a powder keg of hostility and then dash such hopes, then the worst elements take over and make life a living hell for everyone.
Personally, I foresee a bloodbath in our future (something even worse than the current bloodbath in Gaza). I don’t know whether it will be on the Korean peninsula, Palestine, Iran, or elsewhere. But I do know that foreign relations, like Nature, abhors a vacuüm. Trump presently is a huge vacuüm. A question mark where there should be clear policy. No one knows what he believes or wants. Even he doesn’t know. It’s bad enough when an individual person exhibits such mercurial behavior; but when that person runs the foreign policy of most of the most powerful nation on earth, it bodes ill for the country and the world.
“Iran is used to decades worth of meaningless blather from various U.S. administrations, interspersed with aggressive acts against it”
And forty years of monotonous, “Death to America” chants is what? Substantial dialogue?
Those chants were nothing more than that: chants. The empire-in-decline, on the other hand, has not only had its own chant, “regime change”, but has been actively working at it ever since the illegal invasion of Iraq. Officials at the highest levels, notably Giuliani and Bolton, are on the payroll of a terrorist organisation, the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq, now rebranded euphemistically to National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Recently the US encouraged the Iraqi government not to pay $1.5 billion in electricity bills to Iran relating to the supply to the Basra region. The list goes on and on.
I should also like to mention the 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadeq and his government, engineered by the CIA and MI6.
If you have any info relating to subversive activities by Iran inside the US please furnish it.
@Frank: I’d say 70 years of “Death to Arabs” chants from your Israeli hooligan pals trumps that.
A clumsy diversion.
But let’s play your diversion game. When have Israeli MK’s chanted, ‘Death to the Arabs’, same as the mullahs and their coterie in the Iranian Majlis chant ‘Death to Israel’, ‘Death to America’?
@ Frank: I wasn’t aware that you’re such an expert on Iranian affairs. And you so much about Iran’s majlis. We have documentary evidence of ministers and MKs, along with state-supported rabbis supporting ethnic cleansing, murder of Palestinian children, creation of concentration camps, and what amounts to genocide. Not to mention the arrest, expulsion and criminalization of Palestinian MKs by Israeli Jewish MKs. So don’t go all holier than thou on me. Israel’s hatred for “Arabs” and Iran is at least as strong or stronger than Iran’s hatred for Israel or the U.S.
You are done in this thread. Don’t make me say this again.
You appear to be using either IP proxy servers or multiple IP addresses. If you are, don’t.
I am less pessimistic than you about our future. The US cannot afford to attack North Korea, as Seoul, a good part of SK, and significant parts of Japan would be destroyed by NK’s conventional, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Moreover, some 30,000 US service(wo)men and their families and US expats, amounting to some 300k Americans, would be killed too.
Iran: too big, too inhospitable geography-wise, and a formidable army that can cause significant damage to US forces around the Gulf. Moreover, a US attack on Iran will undoubtedly result in a missile rain on Israel from both Iran and Lebanon/Hezbollah, which would overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome and reduce the entire country to rubble with the concomitant millions of deaths. Even if Israel were to use its nuclear weapons against Iran (to Lebanon is out of the question because of the radioactive fall-out on Israel), it would still be reduced to rubble.
Palestine: there is no more Palestine. It is just a matter of time before the West Bank will be annexed with total impunity, and the Palestinian bantustans will be reduced to concentration camps just like Gaza.
Russia: no chance, the US would be roasted like Russia, if not before, what with the new, very advanced Russian weapons.
China: too big and mighty. Not as mighty as the US, but too big to attack.
The US will continue its slide into the realm of equals among Russia, China, and the other nuclear states which it will not be able to act against. Trump is accelerating that process. Meanwhile the financial drain of those endless wars against all & sundry will sooner or later catch up with the empire-in-decline.
the u.s. will never attack no one. nobody will dare to think otherwise, (except bibi)
as i wrote elsewhere the us have fallen to been relegated by one and all, as someone wrote once trust is gone it is very hard to get back almost impossible. taking into account the huuge number of agreements that were signed or about to be that trump destroyed, no head of state will consider agreeing with anything with the u.s. knowing that you may elect another person soon after that will reject anything and everything that was signed.
whereas bibi, he doesn’t care about the rivers of blood that his warmongering may cause, what does he care, been expelled from israel and live like a king by extorting his buddies. this indeed is a very very realistic scenario
‘…Iran: too big, too inhospitable geography-wise, and a formidable army that can cause significant damage to US forces around the Gulf…’
Yes, but those who are trying to start this war don’t care if we win. All that matters is that we fight.
mr richard. i hope your item here is to try to explain to the cannabis smokers the vapid trumps words mean.
had these words been uttered by obama, i’d say MAYBE WITH A HUUUUGE IF ATTACHED. coming from who said them i can see the ayatolla SSSS rolling on the floor and grabbing their sides.
trump’s art of meeting is based on him extorting bankers ONLY , on the political level his meetings are noteworthy for their results FAILURE AND FOULMOOUTHING HIS COUNTERPARTS. leaving to his minions to try to flesh the “agreement” which existed only in his mind and nowhere else.
trump has lowered the american dream down to sewer level why should any self respecting head of state lower himself to that level knowing that trump is only there to extort in order to TAKE and never to GIVE anything in return
so trumps uttering at the global level have zero meaning, at the national level sorrily only to destroy bit by bit what 3 generations of americans have fought blood sweat and tears to build equality.
rip democracy , thank you zuck, bezos, kochs
sigh
Hey Rip Van Winkle. Time to wake up and rub the sand from your eyes.
Let’s begin with the US Embassy hostage crisis. The Hezbollah (Iranian proxy) attack on the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, and later on, the Khobar Towers bombing.
Followed by Iranian Naval mining operations against American vessels in the Persian Gulf.
Iraqi Shi’a militia (Iranian proxy) attacks on US forces using IEDs and Iranian designed IEP’s.
And the very latest, cyber warfare against American banks and infrastructure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/world/middleeast/us-indicts-iranians-in-cyberattacks-on-banks-and-a-dam.html
Butter, Klass, wouldn’t melt.
@Frank: Hey hasbaroid: time to wake up and wipe the lies from your eyes: lets’s begin with the CIA overthrow of Iran’s democratically- elected government. Then the U.S. training and support for the Shah’s SAVAK torturers. Then U.S. support for Saddam and Iraq during the Iran Iraq-War, in which 1-million Iranians died. Followed by the USS Vincennes destroying an Iranian passenger plane with 300 dead. My list of horrors tops yours.
You are done in this thread.
In describing Trump’s behavior as “mercurial”, you have really hit the nail on the head.