By Samuel D Tweah Jr. (former Finance and Development Planning Minister)
President Donald Trump campaigned on his ability to protect world peace, arguing that were he in the White House, the Russia-Ukraine war would not have started and that probably the current deadly Israel-Hamas fight in Gaza might have been obviated. Donald Trump was not in the White House so the world missed these opportunities.
But Trump is now the U.S. President and the world is on the brink of escalation in the Iran-Israel conflict that would make both the Russia-Ukraine and the Isarel-Hamas conflicts mere backyard skirmishes.
The world braces for an Iranian response to yesterday’s attacks from Israel that aimed to degrade Iranian nuclear potential or capability in retaliation to Iranian missile and drone attacks on Israel in April 2024. President Trump has evidently failed to prevent Israel’s retaliation.
But his failure to prevent Iran’s counter-retaliation undoubtedly holds implications for global peace and more personally for the Trumpian philosophy or strategy for global stability, enabling critics to describe it as a mere “wishful thinking,” oblivious to complexities and dynamics of global relations and tensions. President Trump should not allow this to happen.
He can woo Iran by launching the Great Trumpian American pivot toward Iran. In recent months reports indicate that the President has been mulling the outline of such a strategy, but premonition from anti-Iranian foreign policy wonks from both the left and the right may be stalling these maneuvers, with the risk that this stalling may lead to policy muddling and a lack of decisiveness that plunge the world into chaos with Trump at the helm of global power.
With the Israeli attack, the president needs to make the decisive pivot to Iran, arguing that Iran has been an international pariah on the back of terrorist aggression; it can rebrand this image and mainstream its way into the comity of nations on the back of an “Iranian restraint.”
The Trumpian pivot must engender this Iranian restraint by appealing to Iran’s rich history as a civilization, its prior relations with the United States, the colossal economic impact pariahdom has exacted on the country and the amazing intelligence and capacity of the Iranian people.
First, inroads of the Islamic revolution can be analogous to those of the Persian civilization provided the revolution’s aims are revised away from a sworn destruction of the State of Israel and an umbilical pursuit of terrorism as a weapon in international relations.
Second, throughout history nation-states have shifted alliances as conditions through history have changed, and Iran’s prior history with the United States offers a prism via which current Iranian leaders, acting under the aegis of the revolution, can reorient relations with the United States.
Today, Iran has lost more than half of its current national income on account of persistent conflict and deleterious designations as a “financier of terrorism.” With its natural oil wealth, it is only becoming poorer on account of its current strategic pursuits.
Lastly, that Iran supplies drones to Russia and ranks 19th, three points below Israel’s 16th, in the International Mathematics Olympiad, point to the wonderful and natural intelligence of the Iranian people, which is being stifled by the current dystopian state of affairs.
Those pushing for the pivot must argue that counter-retaliation does not project an image of strength for Iran and will actually leave the country worse off. If obtaining nuclear weapon remains a major policy goal of current Iranian leaders, that goal is threatened more by a path of conflict than one of conciliation. Iranian nuclear potentialities destroyed can be rebuilt provided Iran becomes an acceptable member of the international community.
The constraints to Iranian nuclear ambitions consist in the malignant policy choices the country has made in its conflict with the United States since the Iranian revolution in 1980; that constraint does not consist in the fact that Iran is an Islamic State. If these choices and patterns persist, the country loses, and any expected gains from a “projection of strength” in an over-zealous counter-retaliation against Israel can be put to zero.
President Trump should bring the American foreign policy establishment to an acceptance of these arguments and consider wooing Iran to transition to a new path as a consequential cornerstone for Middle Eastern peace and global stability. Lessons from President Obama’s rapprochement can be learned by both Iran and the U.S.
Iran must learn that deception and dishonesty portray an absence of integrity and will be punished. The U.S. must learn that transitioning from international hostility to normalcy requires time and patience.
The President has an opportunity in the fact that the Iranian Spiritual Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has not yet declared war on Israel but has spoken of “harsh” punishment in his official response on Iranian TV. This may be an indication the Ayatollah himself may be open to new approaches and new thinking. Israel has reported that Iras has fired at least 100 drones toward Israel in what appears to be an initial reaction.
However, it falls to President Trump to prevent any full-scale war. He should use the power and leverage of the American presidency to achieve this. If Trump succeeds in preventing a serious, consequential Iranian retaliation, he can point to this success as a first instance of demonstrated Iranian sincerity and honesty toward reentry into the global internationalorder, since Iran would have swallowed its pride for the sake of global peace.
Donald Trump can then structure his American pivot toward Iran and his broader philosophy of peace on this Iranian honesty, in the process sparing the world a major conflict.
The world will be watching how Trump navigates these perplexities in the coming days and weeks.
