US President Donald Trump’s late-night tweet warning of dire consequences if Iran threatens the US highlighted his administration’s confidence in a strategy Trump credits with bringing North Korea to the negotiating table — a move he boasted is already paying dividends.
In an all-caps tweet on Sunday directed at Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Trump said the US would not tolerate Iran’s “DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH” — a response to a warning that Rouhani made to Trump.
The tweet followed a speech by US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo labeling Iranian leaders “hypocritical holy men” and calling out many by name for alleged corruption.
Illustration: Mountain People
The stepped-up pressure comes about three months before US sanctions snap back against nations that continue importing Iranian oil.
US officials reject suggestions that even close US allies would end up getting broad exemptions to sanctions, saying that governments must show they are significantly cutting crude imports to avoid penalties. In that way, Trump’s tweet to Rouhani was also directed at reluctant US allies in Europe and Asia.
Behind that effort, administration officials and analysts say, is Trump’s desire to goad Iran — which has seen repeated public protests over corruption and slow economic growth — back to the negotiating table to hammer out a new, more comprehensive deal to replace the nuclear accord from which the US withdrew in May.
“The idea is to build up leverage and then explore opportunities to use that leverage,” said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who has advised Pompeo. “The more the regime is being destabilized, the more leverage they have and the better the likelihood of a comprehensive deal on US terms.”
It might be working: Earlier this month, officials from the remaining parties to the nuclear deal met in Vienna to look for ways to ensure that Iran still gets the benefits it is seeking from the accord, despite the US threats.
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif called for “practical solutions” rather than “obscure promises,” but world powers were not able to offer concrete proposals, and diplomats have said that there might be little they can do.
It is no coincidence the Trump administration is relying on the aggressive language that echoes Trump’s approach to North Korea.
Last year, Trump escalated his rhetoric, threatening “fire and fury” against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and provoking fears of a military conflict that eased when the two leaders agreed to a historic summit.
Trump has since claimed victory for defusing tensions.
“He’s used this kind of tactic before with North Korea, he sees it as having succeeded and advantaged him,” Brookings Institution foreign policy program deputy director Suzanne Maloney said.
Trump and his top advisers, including Pompeo and son-in-law Jared Kushner, believe that the tough rhetoric against North Korea, coupled with the harsher sanctions regime, played a key role in what they say is Kim’s willingness to give up his nuclear weapons.
Despite few details, no timetable for denuclearizing North Korea and few signs of progress since the Trump-Kim meeting, the president has publicly maintained that his approach has paid off.
“A Rocket has not been launched by North Korea in 9 months,” Trump tweeted on Monday morning. “Likewise, no Nuclear Tests. Japan is happy, all of Asia is happy.”
However, unlike isolated North Korea, whose nuclear program unified international opinion and led to tough UN Security Council sanctions backed by China and Russia, many nations do business with Iran, and Trump’s decision to quit the nuclear deal is still broadly criticized.
Another challenge Trump faces with Iran is that his own advisers seem dubious about the possibility of reaching a deal.
In his own comments, Pompeo appealed directly to Iran’s people and repeatedly called on Tehran to stop its support for terrorism and become a “normal” country.
He said Iran must make changes “that I don’t see happening today, but I live in hope.”
The proximate reason for Trump’s tweet were remarks made by Rouhani.
The US “must understand well that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace and war with Iran is the mother of all wars,” Rouhani said in a speech in Tehran on Sunday.
As Iran has done in the past, Rouhani said that Iran might be willing to disrupt oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Middle East’s biggest oil exporters rely on the Strait, the passage linking the Persian Gulf with global waterways, for the vast majority of their crude shipments — about 17.5 million barrels a day.
If the passageway were closed, pipeline networks could export less than one-quarter of the total, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
“He’s angry” in the wake of the US decision to quit the nuclear deal he championed, said Fouad Izadi, a professor of American studies at the University of Tehran, of Rouhani. “He’s put a lot of his own prestige on the line and it’s not his fault that it’s not working and that Trump decided to leave the nuclear agreement, so he was sending a signal that he’s not the same Rouhani that he was a couple of years ago.”
Trump responded with anger of his own.
In a Twitter post late on Sunday, Trump said: “To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!”
Asked about the president’s tweet on Monday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump is “going to continue to focus on the safety and security of the American people.”
Trump’s ultimate goal is keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of Iran’s leaders, she added.
Zarif on Monday tweeted back at Trump, scoffing in kind: “COLOR US UNIMPRESSED: The world heard even harsher bluster a few months ago. And Iranians have heard them — albeit more civilized ones — for 40 yrs. We’ve been around for millennia & seen fall of empires, incl our own, which lasted more than the life of some countries. BE CAUTIOUS!”
Just a few hours before Trump’s Sunday evening tweet, Pompeo personalized the administration’s focus on Iran, calling out by name the head of Iran’s judiciary, the minister of the interior and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself, stopping just short of a plea for regime change.
“These hypocritical holy men have devised all kinds of crooked schemes to become some of the wealthiest men on Earth while their people suffer,” Pompeo said.
In a statement on Monday, Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton sought to portray Trump’s tweet as part of a broader, premeditated campaign to counter any acts of aggression by Iran, rather than threatening rhetoric alone.
In his past role as a Fox News commentator and conservative academic, Bolton advocated for military strikes against Iran and an overthrow of the regime.
“I spoke to the president over the last several days, and President Trump told me that if Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid before,” Bolton said in a statement released by the White House.
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