Trump's goal is to make an impossible deal with Iran; US expert
Iran and U.S have faced stressful movements of tension with each other over the last forty years, but the difference in recent days is the level of unpredictability of the leadership in the current environment coming from both sides, Assistant Professor of Political Science told ILNA.
Speaking to ILNA news agency, the Professor of Kansas University Michael Wuthrich added "The recent tension between Iran and the US has been unusually high."
He referred to Trump's unilateral policies and said that in previous years, the American president whether Democrat or Republican had a very deliberative approach to decisions that they would make in regard to the other but the Trump administration’s foreign policy is almost intentionally to do the opposite of this.
"All previous presidents relied heavily on the country-level experts who had spent their careers seeking to understand Iranian society, politics and objectives but Trump’s foreign policy, in general, has been to do the unprecedented and unpredictable action."
The U.S political Professor confirmed "Trump strategy comes from his years as a strategy as a businessman and his lack of experience in politics and as a political leader.
"He is constantly looking for the best deal, and one of his strategies to get people to accept deals with him is to be unpredictable," he added.
Michael Wuthrich believed "Countries that would not work with Trump become willing to settle because they are afraid he may make (what appears to be at least) an irrational decision and action that could jeopardize them.
"Trump breaks agreements. He doesn’t meet with or work with people he is supposed to. He often ignores his expert advisors and government secretaries and breaks popular and conventional norms of diplomacy and interaction."
Asked why European countries are not taking serious steps to support Iran, he said "The European leaders do not know what to make of Trump. The European countries who were party to the JCPOA are at a point where they really don’t know what to expect from either the United States or Iran."
"They just want the tension to go away, but they don’t know how to do it. The Europeans are not happy with Iran’s behavior either."
The U.S expert added that European leaders are thinking that triggering the dispute mechanism might cause the Iranian leadership to try harder to signal their willingness to work with the other leaders, and the action might drive either Iran or the United States back to the table.
"I think understanding his foreign policy approach (which we can just call the “unpredictability doctrine”) helps explain why Europe does not know what to do with him. Britain, France and Germany all pride themselves on proper and reasoned diplomacy".
"But nobody knows what Trump is going to do. Not even the people that work closest with him. As unconventional as his approach is, I do think deep down, his primary goal is not to destroy the Islamic Republic but to make an agreement with Iran that nobody else was able to do before," the professor of political science added at the end of his interview.
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