Trump’s high-stakes nuclear poker tactics on full display
President Donald Trump is turning two crucial foreign policy dramas — over the Iran deal and a startling opening on the Korean peninsula — into one big game of televised nuclear poker.
He’s concealing his hand, but constantly raising the stakes. He’s dripping tantalizing details out bit by bit, stoking expectations and speculation about his next moves.
“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said Monday regarding his decision expected in two weeks about whether to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. “I’m not telling you what I’m doing, but a lot of people think they know. And on or before the 12th, we’ll make a decision.”
President Donald Trump is turning two crucial foreign policy dramas — over the Iran deal and a startling opening on the Korean peninsula — into one big game of televised nuclear poker.
He’s concealing his hand, but constantly raising the stakes. He’s dripping tantalizing details out bit by bit, stoking expectations and speculation about his next moves.
“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said Monday regarding his decision expected in two weeks about whether to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. “I’m not telling you what I’m doing, but a lot of people think they know. And on or before the 12th, we’ll make a decision.”
Trump also seems to be seeing the Iran deal through a personal prism.
It often seems that his animosity for President Barack Obama may have prevented him taking a rounded look at the central foreign policy legacy achievement of his predecessor.
Trump’s ultra-personal approach to the intricate cases of North Korea and Iran have prompted fellow leaders on opposite sides of an argument to adopt their own unorthodox theatrics to reach him.
French President Emmanuel Macron last week laid on an ostentatious show of hugs, kisses and hand holding in a bid to convince Trump to stay in the Iran deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on Monday with an elaborate, prop-laden PowerPoint broadcast accusing Iran of lying about its past nuclear activity. The appearance was timed minutes before Trump’s news conference Monday with the Nigerian President.
And perhaps seeking to keep Trump engaged in the political possibilities of meeting Kim, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said Monday the US President already deserved the Nobel peace prize.
The constant drip of details about the venue of the North Korea summit — and Trump’s warning that he could “respectfully” walk out, are diverting attention from the key question of whether the North really is ready to give up its nuclear program and has changed its behavior.
The President suggested on Twitter on Monday that the meeting could be held at the Peace Village in the demilitarized zone between the Koreas. There is a worry in Washington that such a venue could be seen as a concession to Kim given that the President would have to fly halfway across the world to make the meeting.
But Trump tweeted Monday that the border would be a “more Representative, Important and Lasting site than a third-party country? Just asking!”
It could be that that Trump, with his penchant for showmanship, saw the stunning pictures of Kim and Moon at the world’s last Cold War-era frontier last week and wanted a piece of it himself.
Certainly such a venue would be more in tune with Trump’s theatrical reflex than a hotel ballroom or a government facility in Singapore, another possible location mentioned by the President Monday.
Attention being paid to the logistics of the summit is for now at least overshadowing the historic potential of the meeting itself.
Source:-https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/01/politics/donald-trump-iran-north-korea/index.html
