Dateline Westminster: A gaggle of think-tank mandarins, fortified by committee biscuits and the unshakeable belief that their opinions matter, have convened to decode the mysterious semaphore emanating from the Trump administration’s Iran policy. Is it a masterful gambit of strategic ambiguity? A belly-flop into the shallow end of diplomacy? Or merely the flailing of a man who thinks a nuclear deal is something you negotiate over a Big Mac?
Let us examine the evidence. Scenario One: The ‘Art of the Deal’ delusion. Trump, having penned a book he probably did not read, now believes he can talk the Ayatollahs into submission by firing off contradictory tweets. One morning: ‘Iran, we will wipe you off the map.’ Afternoon: ‘Love the Iranian people, great food, great carpets.’ This, we are told, is ‘keeping them off balance’. But so does a toddler on a sugar high, and we do not trust him with the nuclear codes.
Scenario Two: The ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ farce. Here, Washington plays the rogue elephant while London and Paris proffer the olive branch. ‘We are the moral conscience,’ simpers our Foreign Secretary, before approving another arms sale to Saudi Arabia. The Iranians, who have seen this pantomime since 1979, are not amused. They are also not fooled, mostly because they have access to television and functioning brain cells.
Scenario Three: The ‘Whoops, My Finger Slipped’ theory. This posits that US foreign policy is less a chess game and more a game of Jenga played with a sledgehammer. One tweet dismantles the JCPOA, another threatens war, a third suggests a summit. The common denominator? No one, least of all the White House, knows what comes next.
Our own strategists, mired in Brexit-induced paralysis, have concluded that the best course is to ‘monitor the situation closely’. This translates to: ‘We will wait until the Americans tell us what to think, then agree wholeheartedly, preferably over a gin and tonic.’
In conclusion, the only thing certain about Trump’s Iran strategy is that it will change by the time you finish reading this sentence. But do not despair. If diplomacy fails, the UK can always contribute a sternly worded letter and a platoon of expert negotiators who have recently resolved the Northern Ireland protocol. That should terrify Tehran into submission.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have a date with a bottle of Bombay Sapphire. The only thing more volatile than the Middle East is my liver.
