Early this year, as harsh U.S. sanctions had begun to take a severe toll on North Korea, Kim Jong-Un began signaling pliancy. Throughout 2017 Pyongyang’s ruler deliberately provoked the U.S. and its allies in the region by firing a series of test missiles—sixteen in all. The last of those was fired in late November. By January the North’s dictator was asking for talks with South Korea, and in March Kim sent a letter to Trump asking for diplomatic talks. The sanctions had begun to make the regime’s continuance an open question.
Then the president accepted Kim’s request. In due course he met with Kim in Singapore, called off the joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises that cost the DPRK so dearly, showered the regime with sick-making praise, and so strengthened its dictator and elite. The sanctions are still in place, but Trump’s sunshine policy has almost certainly emboldened China and others to skirt them. Just as the U.S. policy of maximum pressure was beginning to take effect, the president unaccountably made it bearable.
Will the same happen with Iran? Suddenly it looks that way.
With the United States’ exit from the Iran nuclear deal, sanctions on the country are scheduled to be reimposed on August 6. Those sanctions cover the regime’s purchase of software, automobiles, precious metals including gold, and its use of the dollar. A further and much costlier hit is scheduled for November 4, when American and U.S.-controlled firms will no longer be permitted to sell oil to Iran. The U.S. is also pressuring European and other allies to discontinue oil sales to the regime.
The impending deadline is having a fierce effect on the country. Last weekend the Iranian currency, the rial, began a steep decline. By late Monday, the rial stood at 44,000 to the dollar on the official market, and just about worthless on the more realistic black market—122,000 rials to the dollar. Add the increasingly volatile protests happening around the country, constant power outages, and costly industrial strikes, and the frequently asked questions about regime collapse seem less theoretical.
The failure of any government bring challenges for vast numbers of its innocent citizens, of course, but the prospect of an end to Iran’s belligerent theocracy is cause for great hope. The regime aids rogue regimes around the world, funds terrorist insurgencies across the Middle East, and abets Bashar Assad’s butchery in Syria. Only the naïfs of foreign policy establishments in North America and Europe seriously believe Iran isn’t furtively seeking a nuclear bomb to strenghten its hegemony.
As if on cue, President Trump on Monday indirectly suggested that he’d be happy to save Iran from its woes. Asked at a press availability with Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte if he, Trump, would be willing to meet directly with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, the U.S. president said:
Asked if such a meeting would be premised on preconditions, Trump answered: “No preconditions. No. If they want to meet, I’ll meet. Anytime they want. Anytime they want. It’s good for the country, good for them, good for us, and good for the world.”
Our hope is that the president’s comments don’t foreshadow another ill-judged attempt at personal diplomacy that ends up saving a vicious regime’s well-deserved demise.
We recall another practitioner in personal diplomacy announcing his willingness to meet with dictators without precondition. Asked in a 2007 primary debate if he would be willing to meet, “without precondition, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea,” Sen. Barack Obama answered: “I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them—which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration—is ridiculous.”
Back then, Congressional Republicans rightly expressed disbelief and outrage that an American president would negotiate directly with criminals like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Assad, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jong-Il with no prior demands. Now the successors of these men are in charge, and a sitting Republican president says he’s happy to do the same. What a difference an election makes.
