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White House Watch: As 2018 Dawns, Trump Focuses on Iran

By Michael Warren

Donald Trump begins 2018 with a rare condition for his presidency: the biggest news story isn’t directly about him. That doesn’t mean the president hasn’t had a lot to say about the wave of anti-regime protests in Iran that have taken place since last Thursday. As Jeryl Bier reported, the Trump administration was initially slow to respond on Friday before coming out strongly in support of those “fed up with the regime’s corruption and its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad.” Here’s what Trump himself tweeted Friday evening:


Throughout the holiday weekend, Trump continued to express his allegiance with the Iranian people protesting and criticizing the fundamentalist regime in Tehran. The rhetoric was undeniably Trumpian—Iran is “failing at every level,” its citizens are “finally getting wise,” and it is “TIME FOR CHANGE” in the Islamic Republic—and so far, Trump has had little to say about the repressive nature of Iran’s government (though he did say the United States is watching for human rights violations). But his words stuck out for another reason: Their unequivocal support for those protesting the regime stood in stark contrast to those from European leaders.

“We regret the loss of life that has occurred in the protests in Iran, and call on all concerned to refrain from violence and for international obligations on human rights to be observed,” said British foreign secretary Boris Johnson. German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel lamely said “after the confrontation of the past days it is all the more important for all sides to refrain from violent action.” The most the European Union’s chief foreign policy official could muster was a statement through a spokesperson that the E.U. would “monitor” the situation there.

Getting Iran Wrong—From our editorial on these latest protests:

At this point, the evidence is irrefutable: The Obama administration got Iran wrong. So did the international foreign-policy establishment. So did the New York Times and nearly every major center-left media outlet in the United States and Europe. In 2009, hundreds of thousands of Iranians protested a rigged election and the regime dispatched its thugs to crush the protest by assaulting, imprisoning, and in many cases murdering the protesters. The new president had campaigned on the need to “dialogue” with the regime and wanted to prove his foreign-policy prowess by securing a nuclear deal; so he responded with weak rhetorical criticisms and nothing more. A movement that might have blossomed into a democratic and peaceable Iran was instead crushed for the sake of an agreement—the 2015 nuclear deal—the Iranian government immediately began flouting. Since then, the regime’s cheerleaders in European foreign offices and mainstream media outlets have ignored Iran’s execrable conduct. Tehran has refused inspectors’ full access to its nuclear facilities, sought banned ballistic hardware from foreign agents, imprisoned Iranian dissidents and at least one innocent American academic, supplied Bashar al-Assad with money and manpower, and funded terrorist organizations around the world.

One More Thing—The Wall Street Journal reports the administration is “lobbying countries worldwide to support Iranians’ right to peaceful protest and is prepared to impose fresh sanctions if Iran’s government cracks down forcefully on the demonstrations spreading throughout the country.” That would be a significant development in the White House’s effort to hold Iran more strictly to the requirements of the nuclear agreement forged by the Obama administration.

President Trump faces two important deadlines this month related to the Iran deal: on whether to certify the deal as required every 90 days by law—which Trump declined to do in October—and renewing a waiver of economic sanctions on Iran as part of the agreement with Iran and several European nations. Even before the protests broke out, Trump was likely to decertify again, and some Iran watchers believed the president was willing to forego the sanctions waiver.

Must-Read Of the Day—My colleague Peter Boyer on Rex Tillerson, who may truly not be long for the State Department. Here’s an excerpt from Boyer’s article in the current magazine:

Few in Washington believe that Tillerson will be secretary of State when the warm weather returns. One Tillerson ally, who just a few months ago was confidently predicting that Tillerson would serve through Trump’s first term, now guesses the secretary may just last into a second year. “But if the president says, ‘I can’t stand this anymore, I want you to leave,’ he’ll leave,” the friend says. Tillerson himself calls reports of his imminent departure “ridiculous,” but his wistful turn at the end of the town hall offered a hint as to where his heart is inclined—far from a mercurial president, the nattering press, and a restive, self-regarding bureaucracy. When asked his holiday plans, Tillerson said he was heading for his 83-acre ranch in Denton County, Texas, a place where the Code of the West obtains. “I look forward to being back in Texas to be with people who have that value shared with me,” he said. “And I’m going to saddle up my favorite pony, Blue, and I’m going to go out and check on some cows.”

On the President’s Schedule—Trump returned to the White House Monday from his holiday vacation at Mar-a-Lago. On Tuesday, he will meet with both Vice President Mike Pence and Labor secretary Alexander Acosta.

Photo of the Day

Donald Trump and son Barron arrive for a new year’s party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on December 31, 2017. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)


Have we already passed peak Taylor Swift? The pop star reportedly hasn’t sold out a show on her upcoming tour, even though tickets have been on sale since December 13. From the New York Post: “By comparison, all the dates on Swift’s “1989” tour in 2015 “sold out within minutes,” according to concertsandsports.com.”

College Football Watch—New Year’s Day gave fans a thrilling Rose Bowl game, the first in the college football classic’s 102-year history to go into overtime. Actually, the University of Georgia Bulldogs and the University of Oklahoma Sooners battled into double overtime in one of the most exciting college games in a while. The Dawgs blocked Oklahoma’s field goal attempt and swiftly scored a touchdown to the win the game 54 to 48.

Georgia will face the University of Alabama, its fellow Southeastern Conference member, in next week’s national championship game in Atlanta.

Song of the Day—“Vertigo” by U2

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