When it was announced last week that President Trump had given the green light for Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, which the senator has reportedly done at least once, it was another example of how President Trump is willing to think outside the box.
It also freaked out right-wing hawks.
Conservative talk host Mark Levin had a complete meltdown, calling Paul “reckless.” Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain tweeted, derisively, “Is this really the guy you want to send over to talk to Iran?” linking to a post that called Paul a “pacifist.”
There were smarter critiques. The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo, Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein, and Bloomberg’s Eli Lake all wondered if Paul was an Iran dupe who might become the new John Kerry in his quest for diplomacy. Kredo reported, “Multiple U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter told the Free Beacon that Paul is allowing himself to be used by this pro-Iran echo chamber in its last-ditch effort to rescue (Obama’s) nuclear deal … ”
“Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, played John Kerry like a fiddle,” wrote Klein, believing the same fate awaits Paul.
Their chorus is clear: The U.S. can’t trust Iran. They will never comply. America would show weakness. We’re empowering Iran. These are fair concerns.
But this is also how hawks reacted when President Ronald Reagan broke bread with Mikhail Gorbachev over three decades ago.
When Reagan first met with Gorbachev in 1985, Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich described it as “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”
Instead of igniting another World War, Reagan’s diplomacy efforts actually quickened the end of the Cold War, something Gingrich would later praise him for.
In 1986, neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz slammed Reagan’s Russia efforts as “appeasement” and accused him of having “shamed himself and the country” in his “craven eagerness” to give the Soviets a nuclear advantage. Podhoretz accused Reagan of “following a strategy of helping the Soviet Union stabilize its empire.”
Worries that diplomacy might unintentionally strengthen a dangerous regime were rampant on the Right during Reagan’s Russia outreach. Similarly, Klein wrote of Trump and Paul’s willingness to reach out to Iran, “there is also a risk of understating the seriousness of the threat from Iran and overestimating the earnest chances for a peace deal.”
Reagan’s hawkish critics didn’t believe he took the Soviet threat seriously in his second term. Virtually every hawk mad at Paul right now believes he is aiding the Iranians more than the U.S.
Any nuclear deal must include legitimate inspections, and hawks today are suspicious those will ever occur in any serious way. It is a reasonable worry.
It was also a concern during Reagan’s time. In the January 1988 article “The Right Against Reagan,” the New York Times reported, “While conceding that the on-site inspection provisions are unprecedented, the Senators will argue that the treaty’s verification is still far from airtight.”
Trump, with Paul’s help, could negotiate the best deal imaginable, but hawks will always say it isn’t good enough. Any deal will always be “far from airtight.” For hawks, the very notion of a deal is a bad deal.
Dialogue is unwelcome. But bombing? They are less hesitant about that.
Those who would support a military strike on Iran also seem to believe Paul and others on the Right who want to avoid war are tools for that regime. Kredo writes, “[Iran] seem to have updated their disinformation propaganda playbook by making outreach to Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson.”
This is an old canard. In the 1980s, conservative activist and independent presidential candidate Howard Phillips, who would later become an anti-war paleoconservative, excoriated Reagan in his second term by saying the president was “fronting as a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda.” The late Charles Krauthammer even called Russia ‘dupe’ Reagan “ignorant and pathetic.”
Hawks did not mince words.
When Reagan met Gorbachev in Geneva in November 1985, the American president whispered to the Soviet leader, “I bet the hard-liners in both our countries are bleeding when we shake hands.”
They still bleed. What Trump or Paul might achieve, despite their hawkish critics, remains to be seen.
But Ronald Reagan proved his haters wrong. Every last one of them.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
