Trump Threats Move the Needle Toward Peace

M.A. Dworkin

Middle East - If you know anything at all about President Donald J. Trump’s manner of negotiating, anything from real estate, to plumbing fixtures, to peace in the Middle East, you realize that he has a specific formula by which he attacks the person on the other side of the negotiating table. He hits them with a high opening offer, sometimes in an outlandish fashion, carrying with him some sort of leverage, and then listens to their counter offer, before he looks to settle somewhere in between, generally much to his favor.

This seems to be a similar manner in which he has approached negotiations with the Iranian Government. His 15-point plan of course reaches for the moon, his leverage is the U.S. Military and the bombing of Kharg Island, and his outlandish manner is his ridiculous threats ‘A whole civilization will die tonight.’ What occurs on the other side of the bargaining table, is someone who is rather convinced that this man is possibly coming off his rocker, unhinged, but not enough that they do not consider him incapable of backing up his threats. Therefore, his threats, as outlandish as they may seem, become the leverage in the negotiations. 

In Trump’s 1987 Best Seller, Trump: The Art of the Deal, he carefully details his entire strategy for dealing with his opponents. This strategy has become quite clear in his manner of dealing with almost anyone and anything during his first and second term of office as U.S. President. 

The highly acclaimed news outlet Axios published an article back in January of 2017 (at the start of Trump’s first term) titled: “How 9 ‘Art of the Deal’ quotes explain the Trump presidency.” 

Following that line of thinking, here are a few direct quotes from his book, ‘Trump: The Art of the Deal’ that may explain how President Trump looks at the negotiations with Iran:

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies (or in Iran’s case their fears that he might be crazy enough to destroy their entire civilization)...That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts,” he goes on. “People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest (in this case the horrifying reality that his threats could become real). I call it truthful hyperbole,” states Trump. “It’s an innocent form of exaggeration, and a very effective form of promotion.”

“I never get too attached to one deal or one approach,” he admits. “For starters I keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first.”   

“The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it happen (which he has never seemed desperate with Iran, quite the opposite). That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.”

“My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward (he states openly in his  #1 Best Seller). I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.”

Retired Gen. Jack Keane, a highly respected news analyst for Fox News, explained Trump’s recent outlandish ‘death to a civilization’ threats in this way:

“Trump knows he can take control or destroy Kharg Island anytime he wants. And he knows how important the island is to Iran. It’s part of his leverage. The President’s threats (to destroy a civilization) are just another way of giving him leverage in negotiating.” 

A two week ceasefire has apparently been agreed upon by both sides in the Iran war. But as of publication time the Strait of Hormuz is still not completely open. Iranian officials indicate a “limited” reopening. 

The big question at this point is what happens if the Iranians refuse to completely open up the Strait, which is the main ingredient in Trump’s ceasefire agreement, and the critical traffic way that allows passage for twenty-percent of the world’s oil remains under strict Iranian control? What happens if prices at the gas pumps continue to spiral upwards, endangering the U.S. economy and economies around the world? Will the Trump Administration have the desire, the gumption, to go back in and continue bombing Iranian military installation points. Will Trump really have the stomach to destroy an entire civilization if he doesn’t get what he wants? And can that possibly be the trump card, the leverage, Iran has decided to continue to hold? 

Is it possible Trump has underestimated the Iranian regime in their unshakable ability to defend themselves, in their ability to be master negotiators equal to him, by continuing to hold out and be defiant? Are they capable of being as outlandish as Trump at the bargaining table?

“Deals work best when each side gets something it wants from the other,” Trump states in The Art of the Deal.

…And so it goes, the ‘Powers that Be’ continue to play their perspective games in order to make their best deal. All the while, the world at large, the people who have to actually experience all the death and destruction, who are not cloistered in some comfortable office suite, are forced to play their own game, their only game: They hope and pray that the best deal that shows its face as the end game, is one that leads to a permanent peace.