With his arrival in New York and offer on Thursday to trade a more intrusive nuclear inspections regime for U.S. sanctions relief, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took a dramatic new step in the public dance that has played out between Iran and the United States since the two countries almost went to war late last month, report agencies.
Amid an escalating American trade embargo, attacks by Iran on oil tankers, and the shooting down of a US drone by Tehran’s forces, US President Donald Trump has made it loudly known that he would like to solve the dispute at the negotiating table, in what amounts to a rebuke of the hawkish advisors who conceived his aggressive policy toward Iran. Though no official talks appear to be underway—and Zarif’s offer is unlikely to be accepted—the foreign minister made it clear that Tehran is willing to compromise and even praised the president’s “prudence.”
Score another apparent loss for National Security Advisor John Bolton. Almost 16 months into his tenure as national security advisor, Bolton is frequently finding himself on the losing side of policy debates, and that has led the veteran Washington operative to feel frustrated in his job as Trump’s top foreign-policy aide, according to three sources close to the White House who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the administration’s internal dynamics. It is also the latest evidence of Trump’s growing disillusionment.
“On key marquee issues, he’s not winning,” said Mark Groom bridge, who worked as an aide to Bolton for more than a decade before breaking with him over his support for Trump. This year, Bolton reportedly pushed for intervention in Venezuela, suggesting that embattled President Nicolás Maduro was about to depart, but Bolton proved wrong on that score. He also was seen as being a key player pushing for the transfer of U.S. military ships and equipment to the Middle East, a period of tension that culminated in the shoot down of a U.S.
drone by Iranian forces. That resulted in Trump’s last-minute decision not to retaliate (the subject of Zarif’s praise for Trump Thursday)—a reversal that reportedly went against the advice of Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. At other key moments, Bolton has simply been nowhere to be seen. When Trump was meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un late last month, Bolton was in Mongolia for meetings with counterparts there. Instead, accompanying the president during his historic visit to the Demilitarized Zone was Fox News host Tucker Carlson—who recently described Bolton as a “bureaucratic tapeworm” and warned Trump that Bolton, who in the past has urged regime change both in North Korea and Iran, was part of the coterie that drove the United States into war with Iraq.
In March, Trump tweeted that he had “ordered the withdrawal” of additional sanctions on North Korea a day after the Treasury Department had penalized Chinese shipping companies for doing business with North Korea. But there were no additional sanctions in the pipeline, and Trump was in fact trying to undo the sanctions announced the previous day, for which Bolton had advocated and tweeted in support of.
Most recently, Trump reportedly authorized Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican and cantankerous libertarian, to try a back-channel approach with Iran, according to Politico (though Trump denied he’d made Paul an emissary). Paul reportedly sought to meet Zarif while he was in New York, and while Zarif, speaking to reporters on Thursday, didn’t deny that he would meet with Paul, he also described the senator’s role as “overblown.”
If it happens, the Paul back-channel and Zarif’s presence in New York would represent the first concrete avenue for talks between the United States and Iran during a crisis that nearly resulted in a shooting war between the two countries. And that crisis shows no sign of abating. On Friday, Iran seized a British oil tanker, further escalating tensions between Tehran and the West.
One source described Bolton as “not thrilled with things” but added that in an administration that has been defined by turmoil and whipsawing policy moves, the key question is whether the move toward engagement represents “a permanent turn of the president’s foreign policy or not.” The rising tensions with Tehran bear disturbing similarities to the run-up to war in 2003. Chief among them: the presence of John Bolton.