On Jan. 12, 2016, two U.S. Navy riverine command boats were seized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy after they, due to navigational errors, inadvertently entered Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
Within 5 minutes Secretary of State John Kerry had called Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister. Multiple phone calls followed and within 15 hours the sailors were released – unharmed.
That’s how diplomacy works.
It’s not always pretty, and not everyone gets all the satisfaction they want, but it works.
On June 20, 2019, a U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton high-altitude drone was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile over the Strait of Hormuz.
Americans claimed the drone had been flying in international airspace; the Iranians claim it had entered Iranian airspace.
It’s under such circumstances that the world needs diplomacy.
On June 21, as the world wondered if the mercurial and unpredictable American commander in chief would bungle into a war in Iran, President Trump tweeted:
“President Obama made a desperate and terrible deal with Iran – Gave them 150 Billion Dollars plus 1.8 Billion Dollars in CASH! Iran was in big trouble and he bailed them out. Gave them a free path to Nuclear Weapons, and SOON. Instead of saying thank you, Iran yelled …
“Death to America. I terminated deal, which was not even ratified by Congress, and imposed strong sanctions. They are a much weakened nation today than at the beginning of my Presidency, when they were causing major problems throughout the Middle East. Now they are Bust!….
“On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights (sic) when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not….
“proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”
First, the “facts” iterated by Trump in each of his first two tweets are demonstrably wrong.
Second, critically, it appears that Trump reveals he had not asked about projected casualties until after a retaliatory strike was ready to go confirms again that he’s a temperamentally and intellectually unfit president.
Third, and either the most meaningless, or most humorous, of the above tweets is that Trump wrote, “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night…”
Really: Cocked and loaded?
What does that even mean?
Today, President Trump’s in a tough spot, one entirely of his own making.
Surrounded by sycophants, chickenhawks and evangelical Islamophobes, Trump lives in a delusional world obsessed with undoing the accomplishments of his predecessor, President Barack Obama.
Most significantly, Trump’s precipitous withdrawal from the hallmark nuclear accord with Iran – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – without having a fallback position or alternative plan precipitated today’s Persian Gulf crisis.
The JCPOA is a detailed agreement reached by Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) on July 14, 2015, and endorsed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 on July 20, 2015.
And it was working.
The JCPOA didn’t, intentionally, address Iran’s support for terrorism and use of proxy militias in the region, among other destabilizing activities because the Obama administration – and the co-signatories – believed that with the nuclear threat no longer at the forefront, the regional issues could be tackled.
Trump never gave it a chance.
Cocked and loaded.
Today Donald Trump is in a tough spot because he’s a bellicose, transactional actor trying to deny the vision of his transformative predecessor. Whatever criticism can be directed at Obama’s foreign policy it cannot be said that he was playing checkers while the rest of the world – especially those with whom America was in conflict – was playing chess.
Trump, through bullying and bluster, may win some matches, but it’s a long game and as long as he remains deliberately ignorant of Iran and the Middle East – ignorant both of history and of all the theatres where Iran could take destabilizing action, from Israel and Palestine to Afghanistan – we as a nation are at risk.
Trump’s in a tough spot of his own making.
He’s in a tough spot because he doesn’t know that in 1953, under the direction of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt successfully launched a coup against Iran’s democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadagh and installed the tyrannical and corrupt shah who ruled Iran, with America’s support, until overthrown by Iran’s Islamic Revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini.
He’s there because he doesn’t know that after 9/11 hundreds of Iranians took to Tehran’s streets and held a spontaneous candlelight vigil, chanting “We are all Americans.”
He’s there because he doesn’t know about Howard Baskerville, 25, an American teacher at the Memorial School of the American Presbyterian Mission, who was killed while fighting alongside his students during the siege of Tabriz, Persia (Iran), on April 19,1909.
Iranians know, and remember.
He’s there because he doesn’t know that when the Persian government appealed, in 1910, to America for help reorganizing its financial system, W. Morgan Shuster was chosen to head a team of experts to create a system of accounting control, audit and responsibility. Shuster, in his zeal and dedication, so antagonized both the Russian and British governments – who both had vast financial interests in Persia – that he was forced to end his mission in early 1912.
Shuster, a devout Christian, believed his work should reflect both his faith and his nation in the pursuit of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all God’s children. He published a memoir, The Strangling of Persia, in 1912.
Trump, who today is trying to strangle Iran with extreme sanctions and bullying, should read Shuster’s book.
If only he could read.
That’s how diplomacy works.
(Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.)