WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has played this hand before during the 5-month-old Iran war.
It starts with a grim warning to Tehran that the Republican president is on the cusp of ordering U.S. forces to “obliterate” its power plants or seize key parts of its oil industry if its leaders don’t quickly agree to U.S. terms to end the war. It ends with him edging away with a last-minute declaration, sometimes at the behest of Gulf allies, that he’s going to give diplomacy more time.
The hardball strategy — one that Trump honed during his years competing in New York’s real estate scene and has employed in politics — aims to create movement in negotiation through pressure and chaos. But the tactic is facing a challenge with an Iranian theocracy that believes it holds a higher threshold for strategic pain than Washington.
While Trump has reveled in the U.S. military decimating layers of Tehran’s leadership and devastating its air force and navy, Iran is betting it can outlast Trump as he faces diminished stockpiles of munitions and the difficulty of executing a war that is unpopular with the American electorate ahead of November’s midterm election.
The latest episode began on Friday when Trump, surrounded by his Cabinet, grimly declared that he was “losing faith” in negotiations with Iran and warned that the U.S. military “ will be hitting them very hard.”
Hours later, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt heightened speculation in Washington — and around the globe — with an ominous statement asserting “Iran will continue to pay until they come to the table in, what President Trump deems, a meaningful way.”
But by late Saturday night, Trump declared on social media that there were signs of progress on reaching an agreement and he was calling off a plan to carry out new, massive strikes for the time being.
The next day Trump emphasized that requests to give diplomacy more time from unnamed Iranian officials as well as leaders from Gulf allies — Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — were key to his about-face.
“It would have been disastrous for them. And they didn’t want us to do it,” Trump said of Iran as he spoke to reporters on his way back to Washington from a weekend at his New Jersey golf club. “And frankly, Saudi Arabia didn’t want it either. They thought that a deal is imminent.”
Critics see Trump reaching for a reset button in this pattern
Trump may still come to the conclusion that a massive escalation in the conflict with Iran is necessary.
But critics say his hesitation also might reflect an unspoken understanding inside the administration that U.S. military might alone may not be enough to compel Iran to back down and bring an end to a now monthslong war that Trump had earlier downplayed as a weekslong excursion.
“I think what we’re seeing here is a president who has an approach that’s just rather erratic,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “At this point, he’s trying to get us back to February. And I think if he could — if he had a big reset button he could hit — he would certainly take that option.”
There have been several moments over the course of the conflict when Trump has demonstrated his proclivity for the bellicose only to back off at the last minute, while declaring his threats spurred progress:
— In early April, the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire in an announcement that came less than two hours before a deadline Trump had set for Tehran to capitulate or face attacks on bridges and power plants — strikes he said would mean “a whole civilization will die.”
— After days of dire threats against Iran, Trump announced on May 18 he was holding off on a major planned military strike because “serious negotiations” were underway, crediting Gulf allies for persuading him to show restraint.
