Is Trump adopting a restrained approach with Tehran?

Is Trump adopting a restrained approach with Tehran?

US president has fired one of his point men on Iran and dismissed another as a ‘warmonger’ while bringing on less interventionist staff

Left to right: woman walks past billboard bearing portraits of slain Palestinian Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hezbollah’s council Hashem Safieddine, Iranian Commander Qassem Soleimani, Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and Palestinian Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Tehran’s Enghelab square, on 20 January (Atta Kenare/AFP)
By Yasmine El-Sabawi in Washington

Published date: 22 January 2025 22:35 GMT | Last update: 10 hours 47 mins ago



In a discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Iran’s former foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, expressed hope that US President Donald Trump would show more “rationality” towards Iran now that he is in his second term.

"I hope that this time around, a 'Trump 2' will be more serious, more focused, more realistic," Zarif said, adding that Iran is not a security threat to the world.

A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran said that Zarif would not meet with any US or third-country officials during his trip.

But it’s no surprise that many were wondering if there would be any side meetings with Trump administration officials.

The US president has recently made some pivotal appointments - and dismissed other diplomats - which seem to suggest he’s pursuing a path to some level of engagement that could lead to a deal with Iran.

In 2018, as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the nuclear deal, a landmark foreign policy achievement for the Obama administration. While UN and European partners to the pact held on, Iran decided that if the US were no longer involved, it would also go its own way.

Heavy US sanctions that followed meant Iran has not recovered financially since then.

In January 2020, the US assassinated the most senior military general in Iran, Qassem Soleimani, while he was in Iraq. After leaving the presidency, Trump revealed it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who pushed him to do it, only for Israel to refuse later to take part in the operation.

Now, in perhaps the most obvious sign that Iran is willing to have a rapprochement with Washington to ease its economic strife, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this week announced that he “does not permit the armed forces of the Islamic Republic to develop nuclear weapons”.

But how open is Trump to a thawing of relations with Tehran?

The hawks

Just after midnight on Tuesday in Washington, Trump fired his former Iran envoy from a Wilson Center role appointed by the White House. Brian Hook had led the “maximum pressure campaign” and was a known hawk in government circles.

“Brian Hook, when he was appointed by Trump to lead the State Department transition [last year], immediately went out and started doing TV interviews that sounded like he was still living in 2017 and 2018… as if he had never left his position and was, in effect, I think, reducing Trump's political space,” Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, told Middle East Eye.

“My suspicion is that had a lot to do with it.”

Just thirty minutes before he fired Hook, Trump withdrew the security detail assigned to his former national security advisor, John Bolton. Earlier that day, he called him a “warmonger” who helped “blow up the Middle East”.

Bolton made no secret for most of his career that the US should take direct military action against Iran. In 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged an Iranian national for plotting to kill him.

“I am disappointed but not surprised that President Trump has decided to terminate the protection previously provided by the United States Secret Service,” Bolton wrote on X.

“That threat [on my life] remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump's own assassination.”

In November, the DOJ charged another Iranian national that it said was under orders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to kill Trump.
Restraint

However, while the president will continue to assume a tough line with Tehran - especially as he carries out his “peace through strength” doctrine - he has also appointed individuals who advocate for a restrained approach to key roles. These appointments may indicate that the administration will take a different path this time around.

Among the most recent is Monday’s swearing-in of Michael DiMino as the deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East - effectively the Pentagon’s chief policymaker for the region, according to an Al-Monitor report.

DiMino is a former CIA counterterrorism officer who had praised the Biden administration for not joining Israel’s missile attacks on Iran and has also made it clear he does not think American adventurism toward regime change would be effective.

“I think he represents kind of the best of Donald Trump's philosophy about the US role in the Middle East,” Abdi told MEE.

He added that DiMino is “saying a lot of things that Trump has said, and so hopefully, can actually be somebody who helps to channel those things into actual policy”.

Elbridge Colby is also set to be in a senior role at the Pentagon as the under secretary for defence policy. Colby is the grandson of former CIA director William Colby and was at the Pentagon during the previous Trump administration.

Since then, he has written publicly about his foreign policy priorities and has often commented on where he believes Washington should prioritise its national security and military agenda: China, not the Middle East.

Trump is further considering nominating right-wing former congressional candidate Joe Kent as the next head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Politico reported last week. The move could see yet another senior Trump official advocating for a reduced military footprint in the Middle East.

“Trump has not yet issued an executive order saying ‘maximum pressure’ is back in effect, right? He has not made a speech saying, ‘We're going to crush these guys.’ He's had advisors who have said that, but we have not seen that from him yet. I think that's significant,” Abdi told MEE.

Abdi said that the diplomatic channels under the Biden administration were "few and far between".

"And so where we stand is, there’s got to be talks, because otherwise, the line that is coming out of Washington is, 'Now is the time to bomb', and the line coming out of Tel Aviv is, 'Now is the time to bomb'."

“This has got to go. It has to be fast.”