President Donald Trump’s ALL-CAPS Twitter threat against Iran—“CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED”—feels like a cut-and-paste job from his approach to North Korea. Apply sanctions, make irresponsible suggestion of Armageddon, see what happens.
The president is like an arsonist who puts out his own fire. The desultory results on North Korea have reduced the fears he stoked of imminent war, but have not even mapped a course to cap and eventually roll back Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.
Trump’s North Korea policy has largely failed to advance U.S. interests, as even the president seems to recognize in private. Trump declared victory, but the North Koreans have neither taken steps toward denuclearization nor committed to do so. They are implementing a very partial freeze of some of their more provocative behavior, such as missile and nuclear testing. That is good news but comes at too high a price: Sanctions enforcement is weaker, we have halted military exercises and strained our alliances, and Kim Jong Un has escaped diplomatic isolation. All of that leverage could have been better used. At least Trump has stopped threatening war on the peninsula—probably the best possible outcome for now.
Trump won’t be able to play this game with Iran.