The People Around Trump Are Totally Unqualified to Stop the Iran Crisis
The People Around Trump Are Totally Unqualified to Stop the Iran Crisis
It’s not clear they even want to.
By Fred Kaplan
Jan 06, 20204:52 PM
There might still be a peaceful way out of the crisis with Iran—the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, and the United Nations, as well as such quite hawkish prominent Americans as retired Gen. David Petraeus and former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, are urging diplomatic overtures from both sides—but President Donald Trump isn’t likely to go that route for two reasons. First, he isn’t keen on diplomacy. Second, even if he suddenly were, no one around him is very fit for the task.
Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have no desire to de-escalate the crisis, nor would anyone in Tehran trust them as emissaries, given their overt advocacy of Iranian regime change. Other senior officials lack the experience for this sort of thing. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper comes to the job as a former aerospace lobbyist, not as a policy denizen. National security adviser Robert O’Brien is a former hostage negotiator (though that could be a useful credential if this crisis escalates much further).
There are a few midlevel specialists who could play a role in either formulating or executing a diplomatic approach. Most notable is James Jeffrey, special envoy on engaging Syria and fighting ISIS; though Trump has diminished U.S. leverage on both issues, Jeffrey has also been deputy national security adviser as well as ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, in the Bush and Obama administrations. He is widely viewed as hawkish but pragmatic, and he knows the region.
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One thing is certain: The tensions in the Middle East and elsewhere are far too stressful, and the main leaders in this faceoff are far too rigid and too prone to miscalculation, to let this crisis go on much longer. It’s time for a lot of players who don’t usually cooperate—in Congress, in the United Nations, in the Middle East, in whatever forums that might muster any influence whatsoever—to step up and say, stop.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/trump-team-iran-crisis-pompeo-esper.html