Marco Rubio has said that a meeting between President Donald Trump and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can be held as soon as tomorrow if the latter agrees. However, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for this meeting to actually happen. A meeting between these two men is like the one in 1972 between Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon, with Henry Kissinger in attendance.
The differences are vast. Iran is not China and Khamenei is not Mao. The leadership of the supreme leader is completely different than that of the Chinese captain. Moreover, Mao agreed to hold that meeting to settle scores with the Soviet Union.
In all likelihood, Iranian officials never expected the situation to turn into what it is today. The scene is unprecedented in the relationship between revolutionary Iran and the “Great Satan”. The truth is that Trump is not just a surprise to Iran, but the entire world. Never has an American president shaken the world order like him. He has changed the rules of the game, the rhetoric, the tools of applying pressure and the threats. He is a president who acts without fear of backlash on the internal scene despite the many critics. He is not afraid of the world that has grown accustomed to defying the hesitant or retreating America.
What Trump is asking of Iran is nothing simple. He is demanding that it return to its own borders after decades of weaving its influence in the region. He is demanding that it abandon its nuclear dream, reminding it that Saddam Hussein, the Assad regime and Moammar al-Gaddafi had all harbored such ambitions. Israel ended the Iraqi and Syrian dreams, while George Bush ended the Libyan one when he tasked late Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika with relaying a threat to the Libyan leader.
Trump is also demanding that Iran curb its missile program, which Tehran views as its source of strength. Setting limits to the missiles is like setting limits to Iran’s role in the region given that Trump is also demanding that it stop sending weapons and funds to its regional proxies.
It is obvious that Iran had in the recent decades waged a systematic coup against the United States’ influence in the Middle East. General Qasem Soleimani never shied away from saying to his inner circle that he believes America is protecting the stability of regimes that are allied to Washington. He believed that changing the shape of the region could happen by cutting the thread that ties the US to these regimes. Soleimani then acted accordingly by exhausting the American military presence in Iraq after the collapse of Saddam’s regime.
For decades, Iran achieved two major goals. It steered the battle away from its territories and towards other countries where the fight was fought by proxies, so it never really engaged in a direct conflict. The situation today is very different, especially after the Israeli war on Iran last June that concluded with America pounding Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran is no longer capable of waging the battle in other countries, but rather a direct clash with America is now in the cards.
Over the decades, the US had never addressed Iran the way it is doing now. Trump is offering it a deal, while also saying that his finger is on the trigger. He is not speaking of regime change, but at the same time, when he senses that Iran is taking a hard line, he shifts course and says regime change could be the best thing that can happen.
Trump is demanding that Iran return to Iran. He is effectively demanding that it no longer have the final say in Beirut and relinquish its ability to overrule decisions taken by the Lebanese authorities. He is demanding that it return from Beirut after it lost Damascus. He is also demanding that it abandon its right to run the government formation process in Baghdad, which explains his position on Nouri al-Maliki's nomination.
Experience has shown that the Iranian negotiator is skilled and arms himself with patience to wear down the other party. This is all true, but does Iran currently hold any serious cards to pressure the US? In past decades, it was able to use “unknown” groups to bomb an American embassy or kidnap an American citizen. Such practices are no longer possible and out of the question. Trump’s America can take the game to Iran, settle scores and see them through to the end.
A new round of Iranian-American negotiations will be held amid these circumstances. They will be held amid a “diplomacy of fleets” whose massive might Trump is hoping to avoid resorting to. The fleets are accompanied with economic pressure and threats to escalate measures against Iran’s oil exports to China.
Trump is making difficult asks of Khamenei. Iran can come up with flexible wording related to its nuclear file, but it will be difficult for it to put the issue of its missile arsenal and armed proxies on the negotiating table. Trump is not calling for superficial fixes, but demanding that Iran change its regional and international approach and abandon an article in its constitution that views the exporting of the revolution as a fundamental part of its policy.
Amid this major crisis in the region, the majority of the major countries are acting with a deep sense of responsibility to avert a new war in the Middle East. Only Benjamin Netanyahu is dreaming of conflict because he fears that an “incomplete” deal could be struck that appeases the master of the White House, but does nothing to address Israel’s concerns.
The question is, will Iran accept that the Middle East has changed and that it should embark on the process of returning to its own borders to become a major country in the region that concerns itself with rebuilding its economy, improving the lives of its people and taking part in arrangements to establish permanent stability in the region?
