{"id":7797,"date":"2019-07-26T05:45:22","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T12:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=7797"},"modified":"2019-07-26T05:45:22","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T12:45:22","slug":"iran-is-gambling-that-trump-is-afraid-of-war-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=7797","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Iran Is Gambling That Trump Is Afraid of War&#8221;, The Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Tony Karon, July 25, 2019<\/p>\n<p><em>The Nation In response to devastating US sanctions, Iran is choosing confrontation over surrender<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">W<\/span>hat\u2019s the point of having the world\u2019s most powerful military if we never use it, then\u2013Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is said to have shouted at Gen. Colin Powell in 1992, over his reluctance to commit American force to the Balkan wars. President Donald Trump clearly agrees with Albright that the military is there to be used, but also with Powell that it should be kept out of quagmires in harm\u2019s way. He has wielded the US military as a political prop\u2014at the border, in symbolic air strikes against forewarned Syrian targets, and in a July 4 DC extravaganza. But, despite his bellicose tweeting, Trump has declined every chance for expeditionary adventurism.<\/p>\n<section class=\"article-body  abody-319830 \">\n<div class=\"article-body-inner\">\n<p>That\u2019s because a key pillar of the president\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d promise has been to reverse the interventionist legacy of President George W. Bush. \u201cWe\u2019re charting a path to stability and peace in the Middle East, because great nations do not want to fight endless wars,\u201d Trump reiterated at his 2020 campaign launch in Orlando last month, in language that could have just as easily come from Barack Obama. \u201cThey\u2019ve been going on forever,\u201d he added, promising that he was removing troops and \u201cfinally putting America first.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even as Trump was considering a wrist-slap air strike on Iran following its downing of a US Navy surveillance drone, Fox News\u2019s Tucker Carlson warned him on air against being drawn into the vortex of a military confrontation with Tehran. Trump stood down (except, of course, on Twitter), and Iran saw its strategic reading vindicated: Trump wants to avoid going to war with a country three times the size of Iraq and with far better capacity to hit back.<\/p>\n<p>Although the US Navy later downed an Iranian drone during a confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has continued to up the ante in that strategically vital oil shipment passageway, most recently by seizing a British tanker in response to the UK\u2019s earlier interdiction of an Iranian tanker off Gibraltar. As the International Crisis Group\u2019s Ali Vaez <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/iran-pairs-diplomacy-with-military-pushback-as-gulf-tensions-soar-11563732680\">told <em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>, \u201cThe reality is that [Trump\u2019s] maximum pressure [strategy] has rendered Tehran more, not less, reckless.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"left indent indents related-oneup\">\n<h4>RELATED ARTICLE<\/h4>\n<div class=\"oneup-blocks\">\n<div class=\"oneup-block-img\"><a class=\"imgHover\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/khanna-trump-war-iran-congress\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/trump-iran-june-24-ap-img.jpg?scale=228&amp;compress=80\" alt=\"The Nation\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<h5>TRUMP CANNOT DECLARE WAR\u2014ESPECIALLY ON IRAN\u2014WITHOUT CONGRESS<\/h5>\n<p class=\"author\">John Nichols<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>A year ago, Trump tore up the international nuclear deal (JCPOA) and used US dominance of the international financial system to bully third parties into participating in a new sanctions regime, thereby preventing them from honoring their obligations under the nuclear deal and removing the incentives that had kept Iran compliant. Trump was persuaded by his Saudi and Israeli allies and their DC echo chambers to put Iran\u2019s economy into a stranglehold unless it surrendered to US terms that went far beyond the nuclear deal.<\/p>\n<p>It was an all-or-nothing gamble, conceived by a regime-change faction more alarmed by how the deal treated Iran as a legitimate partner than by anything happening in its nuclear program. More sober analysts warned that Iran would not capitulate, and would choose confrontation over surrender or the slow death of its economy. It\u2019s certainly clear, now, that Iran is willing to take risks in pursuit of ending the US economic siege.<\/p>\n<p>Iran is not going to concede, and it\u2019s betting that Trump cannot afford a war. That looks like a smart wager, but one that carries a high risk of miscalculation on either side that could spark a conflagration despite the desire on both sides to avoid one.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"left indent indents current-issue\">\n<h4>CURRENT ISSUE<\/h4>\n<div class=\"current-blocks\"><a class=\"no-target-blank imgHover\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/issue\/july-29-august-5-2019-issue\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/cover0729.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"current-blocks\"><a class=\"textred-highlighted\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/issue\/july-29-august-5-2019-issue\/\">View our current issue<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"magazine_text_319830\" class=\"magazine_text\">\n<p>Iran followed its downing a US drone in June with the resumption of limited uranium enrichment and threats to shipping. This suggests a willingness of the Islamic Republic to absorb such force as Trump is willing to consider, in the hope that the resultant crisis prompts third parties to break with the US-led sanction regime. Some 20 percent of daily global oil demand passes through the Strait of Hormuz, meaning that any disruption of that shipping lane risks a major spike in global oil prices. As the Brookings Institution\u2019s Suzanne Maloney told <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/iran-pairs-diplomacy-with-military-pushback-as-gulf-tensions-soar-11563732680\">The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>, \u201cProvocations in the Gulf help galvanize more effective European diplomacy by raising the costs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>She added, \u201cThey remind Trump of his own domestic interests in avoiding either spikes in the price of oil or another costly, protracted US military intervention in the Middle East as he begins his re-election campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And precisely because it lacks a plausible end game\u2014the Iranians cannot capitulate and will keep raising the stakes in hopes of forcing the US side back to the table\u2014Trump\u2019s \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign has, in fact, left the strategic initiative in Tehran\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n<p>As Iran analyst <a href=\"https:\/\/www.al-monitor.com\/pulse\/originals\/2019\/06\/iran-shift-high-risk-strategy-trump-pressure-campaign.html#ixzz5sipNMk00\">Laura Rozen recently noted<\/a>, \u201cIf the United States expected that a year or so of crippling economic sanctions on Iran following Donald Trump\u2019s exit from the nuclear deal might bring the Iranians to the table ready to yield to the long list of US grievances with the Islamic Republic, Iran has flipped the script, newly shifting its strategy from one of relative restraint to one where the United States and other powers increasingly seem to be responding to Iranian actions.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside id=\"inline_cta_1_module_319830\" class=\"inline-cta-1 tn-inline-cta-module\"><\/aside>\n<p>There\u2019s no question the collapse of the JCPOA dealt Iran a strategic setback, reversing some of the diplomatic gains Tehran had achieved through the deal, and by extension, through its nuclear work. It has effectively reset the clock, but only by about five years, to a moment when US blunders in the region had exponentially expanded Tehran\u2019s regional influence, and alarm over its growing capacity to build nuclear weapons had brought Western powers to the negotiating table with a regime most had preferred to see isolated or destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>Iran\u2019s nuclear activities fit the pattern of post-Hiroshima global statecraft: Nuclear weapons have never been an end in themselves; instead they provide the ultimate deterrent. US politicians from Trump to Hillary Clinton casually threaten to \u201cobliterate\u201d Iran, a nod to US nuclear capability. Iran knows that no power can seriously contemplate an existential attack on a regime capable of responding in kind.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-300\">\n<div id=\"inline_ad_300x250_319830\" class=\"ad full-width-mobile inline_ad_300x250_319830\" data-google-query-id=\"CNn76vLK0uMCFUp8YgodJogNUQ\"><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The attraction of a nuclear deterrent for any regime with more powerful enemies is obvious. \u201cThe Iranians had good reason to acquire nuclear weapons long before the present crisis, and there is substantial evidence they were doing just that in the early 2000s,\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/07\/01\/opinion\/iran-is-rushing-to-build-a-nuclear-weapon-and-trump-cant-stop-it.html?action=click&amp;module=Opinion&amp;pgtype=Homepage\"> realist US foreign policy scholar John Mearsheimer<\/a> wrote recently in <em>The New York Times<\/em>. \u201cThe case for going nuclear is much more compelling today. After all, Iran now faces an existential threat from the United States, and a nuclear arsenal will go a long way toward eliminating it.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"left indent indents related-oneup\">\n<h4>RELATED ARTICLE<\/h4>\n<div class=\"oneup-blocks\">\n<div class=\"oneup-block-img\"><a class=\"imgHover\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/can-irans-shrewd-diplomacy-avert-war-with-washington\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/ap-Zarif-Bonne-France-Iran-img.jpg?scale=228&amp;compress=80\" alt=\"The Nation\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<h5>CAN IRAN\u2019S SHREWD DIPLOMACY AVERT WAR WITH WASHINGTON?<\/h5>\n<p class=\"author\">Roxane Farmanfarmaian<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>While it may have been birthed in a chaotic revolution 40 years ago, historical circumstances have made regime-survival rather than the export of revolution the Islamic Republic\u2019s top priority. No question, Iran \u201cexports\u201d its political and military influence, but those exports have for decades been shaped by a certain realpolitik. Iran had no ideological reason to expend considerable blood and treasure propping up Syria\u2019s Assad regime, built on a militantly secular alliance of the religiously heterodox Alawite community, Syria\u2019s Christians and other non-Muslim minorities, and the Sunni Muslim bourgeoisie. Iran saved Assad to preserve the land bridge that makes it possible to directly supply weapons to Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah movement. This access allows Iran\u2019s proxies to target Tel Aviv with Iranian missiles and to hold their own against Israeli ground invasions. For Tehran, Hezbollah\u2019s substantial independent military capability serves a key asymmetrical deterrent against any Israeli or US strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n<p>Iran\u2019s regional military-political reach had expanded considerably in the decade preceding the JCPOA, principally because of the catastrophic blundering of the Bush administration. In Afghanistan and then Iraq, the United States eliminated Iran\u2019s most threatening neighbors (the Taliban and Saddam Hussein), and then for good measure, goaded Israel into a ground invasion of Lebanon in 2006 in the hopes of eliminating Hezbollah\u2014a military catastrophe that killed hundreds of Lebanese and left Hezbollah stronger than ever. Democracy in Iraq brought further gains as the electoral process repeatedly returned governments that put Baghdad within Iran\u2019s sphere of influence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"drop_c\"><span class=\"wpsdc-drop-cap\">T<\/span>ehran appears to have begun research efforts into nuclear weapons\u2014clerical prohibitions notwithstanding\u2014in the early 2000s, in response to the nuclear program of its mortal enemy, Iraq\u2019s Saddam Hussein, who had attacked Iran in 1980 launching a brutal eight-year war financed by the Saudis. Inspections following Operation Desert Storm in 1991 revealed a robust and sophisticated underground program that had brought Hussein perilously close to achieving nuclear-weapons capability.<\/p>\n<p>And on Iran\u2019s eastern flank, Saudi client-state Pakistan had nukes, as did Iran\u2019s key regional rival Israel, and of course, the United States did too. Ideology aside, there is a compelling incentive to obtain nuclear weapons. The \u201cuntouchable\u201d status afforded all nuclear-armed regimes would certainly have its appeal in Tehran.<\/p>\n<p>But in its dealing with world powers, the Iranians were clearly open to other routes to take regime change off the table. In 2003, Tehran reached out to the Bush administration to offer talks in pursuit of a grand bargain that would address all US concerns about Iran, in exchange for normalizing relations. The administration, giddy with the illusion of victory in Iraq and the belief that Tehran had been intimidated by the American show of force, ignored the offer.<\/p>\n<p>The Europeans continued to negotiate with Iran, hoping that offers of economic incentives could stop Iran from enriching its own uranium\u2014which Iran is entitled to do under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Europeans couldn\u2019t get Bush on board, and therefore couldn\u2019t take regime change off the table. And after two years of restraint, Iran turned on its centrifuges, realizing the leverage obtained by slowly, and legally, expanding the civilian nuclear infrastructure that would enable it, if it wanted, to build weapons. It was this leverage that ultimately compelled world powers to negotiate.<\/p>\n<p>And so Iran achieved a diplomatic innovation: It never actually began to build a nuclear weapon, but it demonstrated sufficient proof of its ability to do that it was able to accrue many of the gains that other regimes had won only once they had built and tested atomic bombs. Iran\u2019s <em>capacity<\/em> to produce bomb materiel compelled the key international powers to recognize a regime that many would have preferred to shun.<\/p>\n<p>It was the JCPOA\u2019s effective negation of a regime-change option that ignited such fierce hostility from Israel and the Saudis. The deal clearly restricted Iran\u2019s nuclear work and blocked pathways to weaponization, but at the expense of normalizing and legitimizing a regional challenger they\u2019d long sought to eliminate.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, the nuclear deal did not deal with many problematic aspects of Iran\u2019s regional activities (much less of its repressive domestic policies, though that\u2019s something international agreements to keep the peace among states almost never do). Iran\u2019s ability to achieve nuclear breakout capacity had created a tactical urgency to conclude a deal limited to nuclear activities, but the underlying strategic assumption was that such a deal could potentially open the way to negotiate Iran\u2019s integration in the regional security arrangements\u2014a grand bargain. That idea is deeply threatening to the Saudis, who since World War II had enjoyed a primacy in US Middle East policy trumped only by Israel.<\/p>\n<p>As Saudi historian Madawi al-Rasheed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/04\/23\/opinion\/international-world\/saudi-iran-prince-mohammed.html\">explained in <em>The New York Times<\/em><\/a>, \u201cAny rapprochement between the United States and Iran\u2014such as the nuclear agreement under President Obama\u2014is viewed with intense <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/nov\/28\/saudi-arabia-irritated-iran-us-nuclear-deal\">suspicion and fear<\/a> as it threatens the Saudi position as the leading American client in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"left indent indents related-oneup\">\n<h4>RELATED ARTICLE<\/h4>\n<div class=\"oneup-blocks\">\n<div class=\"oneup-block-img\"><a class=\"imgHover\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/iran-war-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/pompeo-iran-persian-gulf-ap-img.jpg?scale=228&amp;compress=80\" alt=\"The Nation\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<h5>AMERICA\u2019S CONFRONTATION WITH IRAN GOES DEEPER THAN TRUMP<\/h5>\n<p class=\"author\">Trita Parsi<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>For the Israelis, removing the \u201cIran nuclear threat\u201d\u2014which Israel\u2019s own security establishment had long warned was hyped beyond credulity by Netanyahu\u2014also removed the chief red herring deployed by the Israelis for avoiding even serious discussion of ending its occupation of Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n<p>Obama did not disguise the fact that d\u00e9tente with Iran aligned with a wider rethink of US priorities in the region, at the expense of Saudi primacy. His administration openly advocated \u201coffshore rebalancing,\u201d a doctrine under which Washington would retreat from efforts to remake and micromanage the region\u2019s balance of power and, instead, allow a new status quo balancing the interests of the most powerful players\u2014Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Israel\u2014to emerge organically.<\/p>\n<p>As Obama expressed it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2016\/04\/the-obama-doctrine\/471525\/#5\">in an interview with <em>The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, \u201cThe competition between the Saudis and the Iranians\u2014which has helped to feed proxy wars and chaos in Syria and Iraq and Yemen\u2014requires us to say to our friends as well as to the Iranians that they need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace.\u201d It was not in US interests, he argued, to back the hard-line positions of regional allies that risked starting wars that they could not finish without US involvement.<\/p>\n<p>The Saudis, though, were never going to settle for an end to their primacy in US national security doctrine, and they and their allies worked hard to persuade Trump to reverse the deal brokered by his predecessor. But precisely because his aversion to new military entanglements in the Middle East, his \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d strategy has hit a wall.<\/p>\n<p>Not only is Iran willing to raise the risk of a military clash, its actions in recent weeks suggests it has not forgotten its own leverage in the nuclear talks.<\/p>\n<p>Much has been made of how Obama\u2019s sanctions had brought Iran to the table for the JCPOA; scant attention is given to that fact that it was Iran\u2019s uranium enrichment capability, effectively shortening the time frame of any breakout sprint to weaponization, that brought the Western powers to the same table.<\/p>\n<p>Iran has now sought to revive that leverage by pushing its enrichment efforts past the limits it agreed to in the JCPOA, first of its stockpile of reactor fuel enriched to 3.7 percent and then, as it escalates, to the 20 percent level used in cancer treatment (which significantly shrinks the reprocessing time required to bring it to weapons-grade)\u2014those limits remember are far more restrictive than those required by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, within whose parameters Iran\u2019s current nuclear work remains.<\/p>\n<p>But the damage the United States has done to the JCPOA could be irreversible, vindicating the warnings of Iran hardliners that the \u201cGreat Satan\u201d can\u2019t be trusted. \u201cNo sensible Iranian leader is going to wager his country\u2019s survival on who gets elected president of the United States,\u201d writes Mearsheimer. \u201cAmerican policy toward Iran over the past year makes it clear that Iranian leaders were foolish not to develop a nuclear deterrent in the early 2000s.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mearsheimer believes that the short-term Iranian response will include a variety of military provocations designed to alarm the Europeans and others into defying the US sanctions that are killing Iran\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n<p>But the Europeans have been squeamish about openly defying the United States, and prospects for a do-over are fraught, not only for the Iranians, but for the five foreign powers that stood by and allowed Trump to destroy the JCPOA and replace it with a nothing-left-to-lose scenario for Tehran. Consider the incentives placed before Iran\u2019s leaders, right now, and it\u2019s not hard to see how they\u2019d read them as a creating a surrender-or-fight choice.<\/p>\n<p>Having been burned before, Iran will expect significant, tangible concessions for a new deal. Effectively, Trump would have to reverse himself, regardless of how such a move was spun. He may also have to find ways of restraining his regional allies, particularly Israel, from launching attacks on Iran designed to draw Trump into the war he\u2019s desperate to avoid. (And restraining Israel is not part of the administration\u2019s playbook.)<\/p>\n<p>Right now, though, Iran is not being shown any incentive for restraint. Mearsheimer predicts that the result will likely be Iran\u2019s following a more traditional path to securing the \u201cuntouchable\u201d status nuclear weapons confer.<\/p>\n<p>The clearest sign that Trump may be panicking\u2014Iran\u2019s President Hassan Rouhani called him \u201cdesperate and confused\u201d\u2014may be his tapping of Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican and a critic of foreign military interventions, as a back-channel emissary to Iran.<\/p>\n<p>The sense that Trump\u2019s retreat will be to paint some version of existing agreements as some bold breakthrough are reflected in Paul\u2019s recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.al-monitor.com\/pulse\/originals\/2019\/07\/iran-zarif-meeting-rand-paul-possible-talks.html#ixzz5uPYiFTBk\">comments on Fox News<\/a>: \u201cI think there is a possible opening that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sl0QlU99bik&amp;feature=youtu.be\">Iran would sign an agreement<\/a> saying that they won\u2019t develop a nuclear weapon, ever. That would be a huge breakthrough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Well, no, it wouldn\u2019t, since that\u2019s essentially what Iran agreed to when it adopted the NPT in 1970, and has maintained ever since. But Paul was almost comically sycophantic in adding, \u201cI think President Trump is one of the few people who actually could get that deal\u2026because he\u2019s strong, and he is showing maximum pressure, but he is also willing to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Iran has separately offered to ratify the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iaea.org\/topics\/additional-protocol\">Additional Protocol<\/a> to the NPT, which would allow more intrusive inspections of its nuclear facilities on a permanent basis if Trump lifts sanctions. But under the JCPOA, Iran was required to take that step in 2023, so Tehran is simply offering to expedite a step to which it had previously agreed.<\/p>\n<p>Restoring calm and reducing the rising danger of hostilities triggered by miscalculation will require that Iran\u2019s regime is credibly persuaded that its existence is not threatened by outside powers. Essentially, the United States will be relitigating much of what was achieved by the JCPOA, but under less favorable circumstances after Trump has provided Tehran\u2019s hard-liners a compelling case study in the danger of trusting the United States as a negotiating partner.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"rank\">1<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/iran-diplomacy-trump-war\/\">IRAN IS GAMBLING THAT TRUMP IS AFRAID OF WAR<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"aside-wrap\">\n<div class=\"ad-wrap\">\n<aside class=\"right hidden-on-mobile most-popular-plus-ad stopped\">\n<div class=\"most-popular hover_b_remove thenation-single-article-most-popular\">\n<div class=\"popular-article\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"popular-article\">\n<h4 class=\"rank\">2<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/ron-purser-mcmindfulness-mindfulness-meditation-book-interview\/\">WHY CORPORATIONS WANT YOU TO SHUT UP AND MEDITATE<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"popular-article\">\n<h4 class=\"rank\">3<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/colson-whitehead-interview-nickel-boys-novel\/\">COLSON WHITEHEAD OPENS UP<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"popular-article\">\n<h4 class=\"rank\">4<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/peace-in-ukraine\/\">PEACE IN UKRAINE?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"popular-article\">\n<h4 class=\"rank\">5<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/questions-mueller-russiagate\/\">THESE QUESTIONS FOR MUELLER SHOW WHY RUSSIAGATE WAS NEVER THE ANSWER<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tony Karon is editorial lead at <em>AJ+<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/iran-diplomacy-trump-war\/\">The Nation<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Tony Karon, July 25, 2019 The Nation In response to devastating US sanctions, Iran is choosing confrontation over surrender. What\u2019s the point of having the world\u2019s most powerful military if we never use it, then\u2013Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is said to have shouted at Gen. Colin Powell in 1992, over his reluctance to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7798,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7797\/revisions\/7798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}