RCP White House reporter Phil Wegmann discussed President Trump’s Iran strategy on Thursday’s podcast and the irony of inaugurating a new “Board of Peace” as a massive American armada heads toward the Middle East. “The president invited Vladimir Putin to join this Board of Peace. Putin started a land war in Europe,” Wegmann said. “Donald Trump’s view is: Look, foreign policy is a state of nature. And it just so happens that on the world stage, the United States is the biggest bully. We have the biggest stick, and we’re going to be using that for good. We don’t want to see wars pop off. That’s bad for business. And we’re not above partnering with some autocracies if that’s what it takes to get peace.” “A lot of previous administrations dressed up a lot of alliances and relationships with unsavory nations with better language. I think Donald Trump is more honest and transparent about it here,” he said, about the Board of Peace. “But this is absolutely a hypocrisy. This is not a league of democracies marching into that region. There are some unsavory governments.” RCP’s Tom Bevan asked Wegmann whether Trump’s “big stick” posture toward Iran signals pressure, brinkmanship, or something more. “It certainly looks like we’re moving towards something. The size of the fleet is instructive. There hasn’t been such a concentration of force since the first Gulf War,” Wegmann observed. “You don’t get the military geared up like this just to have them stand down at the last minute.” “The obvious caveat here is that this might all amount to nothing,” he said. “But underscoring the arguments made by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner is the fact that Donald Trump is not afraid to press the button.” “In the Mediterranean right now, there’s a huge armada and fleet,” he said. “We would love for diplomacy to work out, but we’re also not afraid to bomb you into submission.” “The political risk here is: If he goes along with a sort of JCPOA that’s stepped up, he criticized Barack Obama pretty severely for that,” Wegmann explained. “The other risk is a moral one. If he gives Iran some sort of sanctions relief and they don’t give up their ballistic missiles or agree to stop killing protesters or sponsoring terror groups, well then he just perpetuated this regime that he told the people to rise up against.” “In the back of Trump’s mind, he’s got to be thinking it might just be easier, rather than doing the hard work of diplomacy, to lob a few Tomahawk missiles at these guys and teach them a lesson.”
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