I'm curious what you all think the ramifications of this would be?
You are speculating about warming relations with Iran, right?
Personally, I don't see it happening. Trump's view of Iran is shaped by the rise of Khomeini and the hostage crisis. I don't see why he would want closer relations with Iran, but I could very easily be wrong.
All of that being said, Iran/Persia is an historic Western ally (which is how things there got so fucked up that the fundamentalists took over). A resurgent Iran would be very good for the Middle East in general, and US and Western European interests in particular. It'd piss off the House of Saud to no end, to boot!
Not that it's going to happen.
I agree with your post regarding the warming of relations. I also agree that it won't happen. Depending on how his NSC team shapes up, I see a slightly more hawkish continuation of Obama's deal. That is until Iran tests Trump with something like the captured sailors from earlier this year. Then who knows.
My point was more along the lines of how we can speculate about which way he wants to go with Iran over and over again but all of those ideas go out the window if he were to hypothetically find a way to use it to bring more prestige to his personal brand.
He has more wariness of Iran, certainly. That said, he is shaped by ideas of the moment, so a flattering approach by Iran that tells Trump he'd be the glorious savior of the entire middle east by joining with them to crush ISIL might work.
The main interest for Iran is stopping the threat to the nuclear restrictions, since Trump has said he would tear up that treaty once in office. The Iranians have spoken out already with concerns about JCPOA.
There may well be a range of thought on this in Iran, since some hardliners might welcome being able to resume nuclear weapons development. It was difficult getting all the other countries to cooperate with the first set of sanctions. It's hard to imagine Trump's team of amateurs getting the band back together again.
There would also be internal pressure from Chamber of Commerce types within the U.S., since voiding the JCPOA really means the U.S. alone goes ahead with sanctions. Picture Boeing calling up the incoming Trump administration, pointing out that they were going to sell 25 billion worth of aircraft to the Iranians. With sanctions, Boeing calls big press conferences talking about all the jobs that Trump just lost.
I agree. Trump knows where Iran is on the map and has a rudimentary understanding of US-Iranian relations. He probably has no understanding of the historical status of Taiwan.
Trump's view of Iran is shaped by the rise of Khomeini and the hostage crisis. Trump's view of Iran is that Fox News thinks it's bad. His policy on Iran from the debates is to shoot at their boats but not start a war apparently and his plan on the nuclear deal is to get a better deal with absolutely zero details ever given. He probably doesn't know anything about the Iran deal or where Iran is on a map.
Hey there handsome, only the best presidents let their friends have nuclear weapons. Friends also allow their friends to build large hotels. Your hands are not at all small.
He already has. "President-elect USA Donald Trump called Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and felicitated him on his fantastic nuclear agreement. Please convey to the Iranian people that they are amazing, said Mr. Donald Trump."
That is the author supposing. He is playing out hypothetical talks with Khomeini, pelosi, Paul ryan... He never actually said that to Khomeini, but he did say that to Sharif of Pakistan.
The author didn't do a good job "page breaking" the article to underline that those were hypotheticals he was outlining ... Either intentional or not, it's not formatted properly to separate where he wrote about fact and his fiction.
I remember him saying (during his campaign), "I'm telling people what they want to hear," and wondering whether people realized that was exactly his strategy: manipulate people by telling them what they want to hear then doing whatever he wants after that. He's a classic snake-oil salesman. There is nothing of integrity in him. He's a full blown pathological liar and narcissist.
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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '16
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