Observing President Donald Trump’s handling of the Iran conflict since the April 8 ceasefire has become rather like being forced to watch the same bad movie again and again. The script never varies: Iran behaves badly, Trump responds with a threat of dramatic retaliation, but within hours of the scheduled massive attack, some Gulf states tell him that Iran is ready for a deal, and he cancels.
Yet when Trump opens a negotiation expecting the positive attitude toward a deal he was led to expect — surprise, surprise — he finds instead that he was misled, as Iran reverts to much the same obstinate stance that provoked his threats in the first place. We’ve seen this dumb movie at least five times already. How many more times will we have to sit through it?
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Obviously aware that this scenario was becoming ridiculous, Trump declared: “Last chance!” That amounted to a maximal threat, one yet more menacing than all its predecessors. It suggested that this time, with no ifs, ands, or buts, Iran would definitely pay a huge price if it didn’t begin to negotiate in good faith. But — Who would have thought it? — Iran’s response to this latest and definitive warning was to become more obdurate than ever. It made all the same demands it had previously made for opening the Strait of Hormuz, and then piled on some more.
Plainly, Iran has treated Trump’s “last chance” threat with open contempt. It even refuses to talk to him. Contrary to what the Gulf states assured, Iran remains more hostile to a sensible deal than ever.
If you keep making apocalyptic threats, you had better be ready to follow through on them if you don’t want to get the reputation of a blowhard who needn’t ever be taken seriously. After all that has happened during these last four months, who can blame Iran for ignoring the threat and instead becoming increasingly truculent? Trump’s failure to respond when the Iranians spat on his emphatic “last chance” offer is something they see as abject weakness — and why wouldn’t they?
Worse still, Trump seems now to be the one begging for a deal. Day after day, it was: we’re so close to a deal, maybe Tuesday; well, Wednesday; or maybe Thursday; perhaps by the weekend. But the weekend comes and goes, and a deal is more remote than ever. So where are we now with respect to Trump’s solemn threat? Well, we are now said to be half-negotiating, whatever that means. The menace of “last chance!” apparently meant absolutely nothing. As the Iranians have concluded, it was just bluster.
This movie has become a real bore. It’s been playing nonstop ever since early April. The Iranians (together with some Gulf states) haven’t even had to be particularly skilled at playing Trump — they simply use the same tactic repeatedly, and he falls for it every time. After a brilliant and very necessary beginning, he is now hemorrhaging credibility everywhere, not least with the Iranians, but surely with the Chinese and Russians too. To say nothing of his own devoted supporters.
John M. Ellis is a distinguished professor emeritus of German literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, chairman of the California Association of Scholars, and author most recently of A Short History of Relations Between Peoples: How the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism.
