It turns out that an agreement with Iran is valid for only slightly more than two Scaramuccis. After dealing a significant blow to Iran's war machine, Donald Trump hoped to extricate the country from further conflict in the Persian Gulf. Last month's memorandum of understanding set a 60-day period for further negotiations, during which oil would flow freely out of the Gulf. Iran would open the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States would lift its blockade and allow the regime to sell oil.
This was a good deal for the Islamic Republic, which received more than it relinquished, but the mullahs nonetheless tore it up. Last week, U.S. forces finally retaliated against repeated Iranian attacks on commercial shipping. The ceasefire is over, and Trump appears to be trying to force the Iranians to deal openly and honestly with him in order to end hostilities. Richard Nixon faced a similar conundrum, and Trump will only succeed if he avoids the trap Nixon fell into at the end of the Vietnam war.
Vietnam was the defining issue of the 1968 election, and Nixon ran on a plan not to win the war, but to attain "peace with honor." That peace proved more elusive than expected, and he spent his entire first term trying to pin the North Vietnamese down at the negotiating table. By December 1972, he had had enough stalling and sent hundreds of B-52 bombers to hit targets across the North.
But Nixon had no intention of blasting the Vietnamese into submission. His goal was to extricate himself from the conflict even if South Vietnam would fall as a result of the American withdrawal. Henry Kissinger hoped the consequences to U.S. foreign policy would be minimal if the South could hold out another year or two. Kissinger aide John Negroponte mordantly observed that "we bombed them into accepting our concessions."
Join the conversation as a VIP Member