The EconomistJune 29th 2019 BriefingAmerica and Iran 192
1nent closure of the diplomatic path”.
That said, there are always channels.
Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, recent-
ly visited Tehran bearing a message from
Mr Trump. True, he is said to have left emp-
ty-handed. But the fact that Mr Khamenei,
who rarely meets foreign leaders, was pre-
pared to see him was perhaps a sign of
openness. The question is what might
America want him open to?
Any deal Mr Trump could countenance
has to look like something tougher than
the one he broke. Iran might expand the su-
preme leader’s apparently long-standing
fatwaoutlawing nuclear weapons in effect
turning religious law into secular law. It
might also agree to tighten the iaeainspec-
tions regime—already one of the toughest
in existence—and to extend the amount of
time for which certain nuclear activities
are prohibited.
In return, Iran would need America to
rejoin the deal, provide greater sanctions
relief than it did in 2015 and decline to press
Iran on some or all of the wider goals Mr
Pompeo set out. America might also offer
the surety of a deal which, unlike the origi-
nal, would be enshrined in a treaty ratified
by the Senate from which no president
could withdraw off his own bat. Democrat-
ic senators want the deal restored, and the
Republicans who opposed it under Mr
Obama might now come round.
This might be presented as “more for
more”. Mr Trump could boast of a bigger,
better deal—most importantly, one struck
by him rather than Mr Obama. Iran could
hail its success in seeing off sanctions and
staring down American threats. However,
such things take time and patience. Iran
and America have a long record of mutual
distrust (see timeline on next page). Irani-speak of a certain desperation. “When we
looked at scenarios in the past, we never as-
sumed such a long and unbelievably ag-
gressive uspolicy towards Iran,” says a for-
mer Pentagon official who participated in
war games to understand how a conflict
with Iran might play out. “Maximum pres-
sure”, America’s term for the tightening
vice of sanctions, “has left Iran as a wound-
ed animal, up against a wall.”
Fissile brinkmanship is the most can-
did signal of Iran’s willingness to make its
pain a concern to others, but there are
more. On May 12th and June 13th several
tankers were attacked off the coast of the
United Arab Emirates and in the Gulf of
Oman. America and some allies blamed
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(irgc). Rebels in Yemen, who have been
armed by Iran in the past, have recently car-
ried out several missile and drone attacks
against targets in America’s ally, Saudi Ara-
bia. And on June 20th Iran shot down a re-
motely piloted American spy-plane which
it claimed was in its airspace.
Mr Trump quickly ordered an attack on
the surface-to-air missile system that shot
down that drone. He then called off the op-
eration, reportedly with ten minutes to
spare. He later said he had done so because
he had learned that it could inflict up to 150
casualties, a death toll he described as “not
proportionate” to the provocation.Deals of choice
What Iran wants from all this is clear: relief
from sanctions. What America wants is
harder to say—not least because Mr Trump
and his advisers may well not agree.
A couple of weeks after America pulled
out of the deal, Mike Pompeo, the secretary
of state, set out a dozen demands to be
made of Iran in any negotiations. They in-
cluded ceasing all enrichment, withdraw-
ing all forces under Iranian command from
Syria and ending support for militant
groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas.
These demands go far enough beyond what
Iran might conceivably comply with as to
suggest that the real aim is regime change
brought on by economic collapse and, if
necessary, military confrontation. John
Bolton, Mr Trump’s national security ad-
viser, has called for attacks on Iran over
many years.
Mr Trump seems less keen. Yes, he has
chosen to employ hawks like Mr Pompeo
and Mr Bolton. He is much closer to Iran’s
regional foes, Israel and Saudi Arabia, than
was Barack Obama, under whom the deal
was negotiated. But on the campaign trail
he largely set himself against foreign inter-
ventions. His volte faceover the retaliatory
raid reportedly followed a conversation
with Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host keen
to be seen standing up for the promises of
that campaign—pro-little-guy, anti-big-
business, nigh-on-isolationist. And thepresident knows that he will soon be on the
trail again. Any military outcomes short of
prompt and decisive triumph would be a
boon to his opponents.
Hence another interpretation of maxi-
mum pressure on Iran: that it is aimed at
pushing the country into negotiations. “I
think they want to negotiate,” Mr Trump
said on June 23rd. “And I think they want to
make a deal. And my deal is nuclear.” Pace
Mr Pompeo’s wide-ranging demands, Mr
Trump stressed there were no precondi-
tions for talks. The plan, to the extent that
such a thing exists, would seem to follow
the template he used with North Korea.
In that stand-off, too, Mr Trump was
prepared to go to the rhetorical brink,
alarming the world with talk of fire, fury
and the size of his nuclear button, before
taking part in a summit with Kim Jong Un,
North Korea’s leader, in Singapore. “He may
believe that by targeting the supreme
leader [with specific sanctions] he can
push him into the same dialogue as he
forced ‘Little Rocket Man’,” says John
Smith, a former head of the usTreasury’s
sanctions enforcement.
Coercive diplomacy can work: indeed, it
produced the deal of 2015. However Wil-
liam Burns, a diplomat who was involved
in that effort and now heads the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, a
think-tank, points out that Mr Trump is
trying the coercion without the diplomacy.
Take the latest sanctions aimed at high-
ranking individuals. Their first targets are
Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and
eight military commanders. The next salvo
is likely to include the foreign minister, Ja-
vad Zarif. Some of America’s allies see this
as making diplomacy very difficult. Iran’s
foreign ministry says it means “the perma-The
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