Rogue nations make a wager: They can handle the US President

US President Donald Trump at a rally in Panama City Beach, Florida. Photo / AP

Three nations that have long defined themselves as bitter adversaries of the United States — North Korea, Iran and Venezuela — decided this past week they could take on President Donald Trump.

Each one is betting that Trump is neither as savvy a negotiator nor as ready to use military force as he claims.

Each also poses a drastically different challenge to a president who has little experience in handling international crises, has struggled to find the right balance of diplomacy and coercion and has not always been consistent in defining his foreign policy.

The rising tensions with all three serve as reminders that Trump's constant talk about taking care of problems that he has accused his predecessors of aggravating, or failing to confront, is difficult to convert into real-world solutions — as events of recent days have shown.

The confrontation with Iran appears to be the most volatile at the moment, with tensions escalating by the day. The Pentagon said it was sending another naval ship and Patriot missile interceptor battery to the Middle East, in addition to an earlier dispatch of a carrier group and bombers, because of potential threats from Iran or allied Arab militias.

That standoff has been brewing ever since Trump moved a year ago to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. Tehran announced a partial withdrawal of its own in the past week, threatening to resume nuclear fuel production unless Europe acts to undercut US sanctions that have devastated Iran's oil revenue.

The announcement put European leaders in the unenviable position of choosing between Iran or Trump, whom they blame for destroying a deal that, in their view, was successfully containing the country's nuclear threat.

When North Korean officials determined they were not getting what they wanted from Trump after two summits, they began firing short-range ballistic missiles.

The two tests over the past week seemed to signal that if the president does not return to the negotiating table, his personal diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, could revert to old hostilities. But Trump appears so invested in making his signature diplomacy a success that he told Politico that he did not "consider that a breach of trust at all" — even though he had said the previous day that "nobody's happy" about the tests.

And in Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro remains in power despite US efforts to lure military officers to the opposition. Trump is irate that the strategies devised by his National Security Adviser, John Bolton, and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, have failed to oust the Venezuelan leader, aides say.

Rouhani calls for unity among Iran’s political factions to overcome conditions which he said may be harder than those during the 1980s war with Iraq https://t.co/A4d4QTWqBW

— Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) May 11, 2019

The pushback from the three nations is especially stark, given Trump's disdain for the foreign policy of former US President Barack Obama.

Trump has long accused the Obama Administration of allowing North Korea to build up its arsenal, striking "the worst deal in history" with Iran and failing to figure out how to use US power against Maduro.

Obama's advisers are now punching back, pointing out that none of the simmering impasses are easy to solve, and certainly not without careful diplomacy.

"Trump promised a disruptive foreign policy that would deliver results, but instead is alarming Americans with impulsive and erratic decisions that leave us less safe and less respected," said Jeffrey Prescott, a senior Middle East policy director at the National Security Council under the Obama Administration.

Trump's problems with all three countries reveal a common pattern: taking an aggressive, maximalist position without a clear plan to carry it through, followed by a fundamental lack of consensus in the Administration about whether the US should be more interventionist or less.

US aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln passes Egypt's Suez Canal on route to Iran deployment.

Get more on this story here: https://t.co/Gw9MNBMvHt pic.twitter.com/WLGtXlAyx7

— SkyNews (@SkyNews) May 11, 2019

The President's own views are hardly set in stone. White House officials say this keeps enemies off balance, but it has the same effect among allies and within his Administration.

As the policies on North Korea, Iran and Venezuela have failed to produce the outcomes he wants, Trump could end up blaming Bolton and Pompeo — both hawks who advocate aggressive postures that have less appeal to the President.

Trump even acknowledged that he frequently had to rein in Bolton, who before entering the Administration had called for bombing Iran's and North Korea's nuclear facilities. Last northern autumn, he asked military officials to give him airstrike options on Iran.

"I actually temper John, who is pretty amazing," Trump said last week.

"John's very good," he said. "He has strong views on things, which is okay," the President said, adding, "I have John Bolton and I have people who are a little more dovish than him."

The U.S. military is deploying a Patriot anti-missile battery to the Middle East to further deter threats from Iran, the Pentagon announced on Friday. https://t.co/t1JYI7KqU3 pic.twitter.com/dPaP51gN3y

— ABC News (@ABC) May 11, 2019

IRAN

Against the recommendations of top Pentagon and intelligence officials, Bolton and Pompeo pushed Trump last month to designate an arm of the Iranian military as a terrorist group, the first time the US had done so against a part of another government.

The Pentagon and intelligence officials had warned that Iran might retaliate against US troops or operatives in the region.

Their worries may be playing out now: Last weekend, military and intelligence officials said they had determined that Iran or its partner militias were possibly planning violence against US troops in the region. The secret analysis prompted the Trump Administration to speed up the movement of an aircraft carrier strike group and bombers to the Gulf.

After an emergency trip to Baghdad, Pompeo said he had discussed with Iraqi leaders "very specific threats we had about Iranian activity that was taking place that put at substantial risk our facilities, our men and women who are serving in Iraq."

And shredding a nuclear-containment deal that was reached through a years-long negotiation process by professional diplomats has lead to this past week's reaction by Iran: a reawakening of its nuclear ambitions, defying US admonitions that Tehran could not violate the agreement and walk away, even though Washington had.

President Hassan Rouhani's announcement that Iran would leave part of the 2015 nuclear deal, despite the urging of European nations to ignore Trump's provocations and stick with the agreement, means Tehran could eventually restart a programme to develop a nuclear weapon.

The US routinely claims its economic sanctions target govts, not people. Yet as now in Venezuela and Iran, so too in #Cuba it’s ordinary people, especially the poor, who most suffer (which, many suggest, is exactly as US govt regime change policies intend)https://t.co/pbLHpOyDto

— Charles Shoebridge (@ShoebridgeC) May 11, 2019

Sanctions imposed by Washington after its withdrawal from the nuclear deal have helped cripple Iran's economy and curbed its financing for Arab militias, but its nuclear aims remain undeterred.

"I see it being a policy of disruption without any plan for replacement," said Dalia Dassa Kaye, director of the Centre for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corp., a research group. "We've lost the leverage we might have had by staying in the deal and negotiating stronger terms with European allies by our side."

Last month, Pompeo acknowledged to Michael Morrell, a former acting director of the CIA, that the Administration's strategy would not persuade Iranian leaders to change their behaviour.

"I think what can change is the people can change the government," he said on a podcast hosted by Morrell, in what appeared to be an endorsement of regime change.

That was in sharp contrast to Trump last week, who said he would be willing to negotiate with the Iranian leaders. "They should call," he said. "If they do, we're open to talk to them."

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's Foreign Minister, has said the US has failed to show it is a "reliable partner" because of Trump's withdrawal from the 2015 deal and other agreements. If Trump wants to negotiate, Zarif said in a recent interview, he should start by rejoining the Iran nuclear deal.

"North Korea has resumed missile testing, disregarding both Trump’s wooing and his threats of 'fire and fury.' It has taken the U.S. president’s measure—and found him weak and empty." Trump's record of failure isn't just in business, argues @davidfrum: https://t.co/ittRzCMMPb

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) May 11, 2019

NORTH KOREA

North Korea has also struggled to negotiate with Trump.

After a failed effort in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February to get Trump to lift sweeping US sanctions against North Korea, Kim fired his negotiating team.

But Kim has one big advantage. In the absence of careful groundwork by US diplomats, North Korea never had to agree to freeze its nuclear and missile production before entering into talks.

That means Kim has added to his arsenal over the past year, making it ever more difficult for Trump to achieve his stated goal of ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons. And in any case, the country's 30 to 60 nuclear warheads give it considerable leverage.

That may explain why the Iranians are threatening to resume production, too.

"The Iranians didn't then and don't now have nuclear weapons," said William Burns, a deputy secretary of state in the Obama Administration with a 33-year career in the foreign service, who began back-channel talks with Iran in 2013. "The North Koreans have dozens, and they're expanding their capacity to make more."

Burns acknowledged that relying solely on pressure from sanctions to rein in Kim did not work in the Obama years, and said Trump was right to engage diplomatically with the North Korean leader. But he said the lack of structured diplomacy meant North Korea was no closer to embracing denuclearisation now than it was at the end of the Obama Administration.

To draft the equivalent of the Iran nuclear deal, Burns said, "that'd be pretty serious, but you don't do that just through summitry."

Transcript: POLITICO interviews President Donald Trump on Joe Biden, impeachment, Bill Barr, North Korea https://t.co/OI6fmhGGaq

— POLITICO (@politico) May 11, 2019

Now that an unlikely affinity between Trump and Kim seems to be hitting its limits, each is waiting for the other to get nervous and make a concession.

"With Washington and Pyongyang, they each think the ball is in the other's court," said Joseph Yun, former special representative for North Korea. "I don't think there will be movement soon."

Bolton and Pompeo argue that if the US continues to take a "maximum pressure" approach to North Korea through unrelenting sanctions, it will force Kim to yield to Trump's demands.

But in March, a day after Bolton praised a new round of US sanctions against North Korea, Trump undercut his own top officials by announcing he was cancelling an unspecified round of sanctions.

"President Trump likes Chairman Kim," said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, as if affection constituted a strategy.

Venezuela's opposition leader Guaidó asks U.S. military to put more pressure on Madurohttps://t.co/WoSzMXkoHo

— TIME (@TIME) May 11, 2019

VENEZUELA

The push for regime change in Venezuela has run into similar headwinds.

Though US officials supported the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, when he tried to ignite a climactic uprising on the morning of April 30, Maduro managed to rally the support of military leaders. By nighttime, it was clear Maduro would hold onto power.

The US has run low on options to coerce change there.

Last week, Vice-President Mike Pence announced an incremental new tactic: The Administration would consider sanctions relief for Venezuelan officials who reject Maduro. But that has not led to any notable defections.

Instead, Maduro and his supporters are still shouting a slogan that no doubt would translate well into Persian and Korean: "Yankee, go home."

c.2019 New York Times News Service

Written by: David E. Sanger and Edward Wong

© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES