Can Trump Hope for a Useful Agreement With Iran?

Among other “death to America” symbols, the Iranian mullahs at Tehran on Wednesday celebrated their 47th year in power with a display of mock coffins of American military bigwigs. The Central Command’s Admiral Brad Cooper, whose Stars and Stripes-clad “coffin” topped the exhibit, participated in negotiations with Iranian diplomats over the weekend. Can President Trump seriously hope for a useful agreement with the Iranian regime?On the same day that the Islamic Republic marked the anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s ouster in 1979 of the Shah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Mr. Trump at the White House. The hastily-arranged meeting, slated for an hour, lasted three hours. Mr. Netanyahu said he came to update the president on Israel’s “positions regarding the principles of the negotiations” with Iran. These terms are unlikely to be conducive for any compromise. Following the meeting, Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social that he informed Bibi that he prefers a deal. If none is available, he wrote, “we will just have to see what the outcome will be. Last time Iran decided that they were better off not making a deal, and they were hit with Midnight Hammer. That did not work well for them. Hopefully this time they will be more reasonable and responsible.” As yet the Iranians are none of the above. Iranian officials hint at concessions on nuclear “oversight,” but reject any ban on enrichment. They crave President Obama’s 2015 deal from which Mr. Trump decamped in his first term. Oh, and “our missiles are not a subject for negotiation, and they will not be,” foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters Wednesday. Iran apparently hopes to amass a ballistic missile arsenal that can devastate Israel and eventually reach America’s shores as well. “My final offer is this: Nothing,” is how Michael Corleone of “The Godfather” fame summed up his style of negotiation. Mr. Trump may have seen the movie. The president said this week that an agreement must include “no nuclear weapons, no ballistic missiles, no this or that.” By “that,” we’d like to think that he meant an end to the regime that the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, awkwardly congratulated on Tuesday.As Mr. Trump talks of diplomacy, he also says he plans to send a second strike group to join the one led by United States Ship Abraham Lincoln. “Iran has never been weaker than they are right now,” a former presidential candidate, Nikki Haley, told Fox News Tuesday. “You don’t want to send all these resources over there, and then still have the Iranian regime standing.” Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers at home and abroad, though, fear regime change. “If the Iranian people want to overthrow the regime, that’s up to the Iranian people,” Vice President Vance says. Yet as a veteran Farsi broadcaster, Menashe Amir, tells our Benny Avni, America and Israel can strike the Revolutionary Guards in their camps and jam their communications. The hope is that the long-suffering Iranian people will do the rest.

Can Trump Hope for a Useful Agreement With Iran?

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