Mike pompeo

Might Donald Trump going to visit Tehran and crack a deal with Iran? It might seem improbable. But then again, there isn’t much with Trump that doesn’t. This is the fellow who ended up at the border with North Korea, playing kissy-face with Kim Jong-un after having breathed voluminous amounts of fire and fury. When I raised this question of a fresh Trump volte-face yesterday in New York at the ambassador’s palatial residence on Fifth Avenue with Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif in an interview for the National Interest, he thus didn’t bat an eye. 'There are prudent ways out,' of his current situation, he indicated. Indeed there are. Iran is floating the idea of beefed-up inspections in return for a permanent lifting of sanctions.

When it comes to war, does the president have too much authority? The Framers of the US Constitution had a rather dark view of human nature and went to great lengths to restrain, divide, and decentralize power. In particular, they believed that it was in the nature of executive power to be unduly prone to war. For this reason, they very deliberately placed the power to take the country to war in the Congress. At the Constitutional Convention James Wilson argued, 'This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it.' Yet the presidency has over the years gathered more and more of the war powers unto itself, and at present intense political conflict is tearing at the fabric of the Constitution.

This time Donald Trump is unlikely to storm out of the room in a huff. He’s invited the top congressional leadership from both parties to a meeting at the White House this afternoon to discuss Iran. Now that Iran has shot down a US naval surveillance drone, Trump is in a bind. Instead of looking like Mr Big, he’s starting to resemble a paper tiger. At first Trump tweeted, 'Iran made a very big mistake!' which made it sound like he was going to take military action against the mullahs. But then a more emollient Trump appeared, telling reporters, 'I have a feeling…that it was a mistake made by somebody' who was freelancing rather than acting on orders from on high. Not likely. The truth is that Iran is calling Trump’s bluff.

The Trump administration’s Iran policy is regime change in all but name. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s former attorney, once told me that while the administration emphasizes 'change in behavior', the Islamic Republic is so flawed that its regime is probably beyond reform. On this week’s Washington Shots podcast, pundit Tom Rogan told me that the list of demands Mike Pompeo laid out last year is so compendious as to demand the collapse of the Islamic Republic. Rogan, an Iran hawk, thinks the secretary of state has gone too far. So too does Trump — or so he did until the Thursday's flare-up, the apparent Iranian bombing of an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman.

The dogs of war are barking a little less loudly. While the risk of miscalculation remains, it is increasingly clear that neither the US nor Iran really wants a war in the Persian Gulf. After weeks of threats, incidents, and saber rattling, both President Trump and Iran’s leaders are slowly de-escalating. President Trump, for all his digital eruptions, clearly does not want to fight. On his trip to Japan last week Trump explicitly disavowed regime change. Last Monday, he said that Iran has ‘a chance to be a great country with the same leadership’. Trump also suggested that Japan could serve as a mediator between the US and Iran, a role that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared to embrace. (Iraq has also offered to mediate).

Donald Trump continues to show that he is one of the boldest presidents in modern American history. He may also be the nuttiest. His decision to remove waivers on the purchase of oil from Iran has set America on an unwavering course for war with the Middle Eastern state. Like Franklin Roosevelt, who tried to starve Japan into submission by halting its imports of oil, Trump seems intent on trying to bludgeon Iran into submission by preventing it from exporting any crude. The problem is that the Iranians aren’t cracking. Instead, they are likely to double-down. Already they are threatening to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Trump will be in dire straits if Iran does that. A fifth of the world’s crude oil flows through it.

Will the Trump administration embrace the Bolton doctrine? John Bolton, whom Donald Trump appointed in April to replace the stolid H.R. McMaster, has been trying to tailor administration foreign policy to match his hawkish views. Among his initiatives, the Wall Street Journal reported, is to make a move to do what he has long wanted done, which is to wage war against the mullahs in Tehran. The result is a schism in the administration.With the resignation of Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, Pentagon officials are now starting to fight back publicly against the National Security Council, especially as Bolton tries to install his former deputy Mira Ricardel, who was fired from the National Security Council, after Melania Trump denounced her, at the Pentagon.