Opinion | No, Trump Is Not a Genius Negotiator

Here is what you will hear from Trump’s defenders: That this is all today — and it was on Tuesday — liberal hysteria. That what we were watching was a brilliant negotiating tactic, that Trump frightened the Iranians. He frightened the whole world. He put forward a maximalist and terrifying and immoral position, and forced the Iranians to capitulate into a deal they would not otherwise have accepted. That night, he did not destroy civilization. That night, there was the announcement of a two-week cease-fire. Are they right? Is that what happened? So let’s just evaluate it on the merits in the sense of the genius negotiating strategy. What we have ended up with is in a situation where we began the war with a country whose nuclear program had been completely and totally obliterated. Those were Trump’s words. But those were words, by the way, echoed by the head of the I.D.F. in Israel, Israel’s atomic energy agency said Iran’s nuclear program has been destroyed and can be destroyed, kept destroyed indefinitely, as long as they don’t get access to nuclear materials, which we were actively denying them. So that was the reality of Iran. It had been pummeled. Its nuclear program had been destroyed. That was what we started with. What we have ended up with is a war in which Iran has lost its military and its Navy and things like that. But it was, to be honest, it was not — it was not using those to attack anybody. What it has gained is a far more usable weapon than nuclear weapons. It has gained, it has realized and shown the world that it can destroy the global economy, that it can block the Strait of Hormuz, and that that would have a cataclysmic follow-on effect. It now seems poised to not simply be able to hold the Gulf states and much of the world hostage because of that pivotal position it has. But it’s now going to monetize that, presumably giving it $90 billion of revenue every year, which is, by the way, about twice as much as it makes selling oil. It has weakened the Gulf states, which now sit in the shadow of this tension that they have to worry about and navigate. It has brought China into the Gulf, we learned, because the Chinese had to get the Iranians to agree to this. It has weakened the dollar because these payments that are being made through the Strait of Hormuz are now being made in crypto or in yuan, China’s currency. It has strengthened Russia because Russia is now making something on the order of $4-5 billion extra per month because of the price of oil, which will probably stay elevated for a while. And it’s almost wrecked the Western alliance because Trump, in his frustration and desperation, when he realized he wasn’t getting his way, has decided to blame all of it on all America’s allies, as if they had somehow joined in, this would have made any difference. When you don’t — when you have a bad strategy with unclear and shifting goals, it doesn’t really matter how many people you have cheering for you on the side, but you take all of that and you say: Those were the costs. And the benefit, as far as I can tell, is quite close to 0, in the sense that Iran already had a nuclear program that was largely defunct. Israel was already far more powerful than Iran and could easily defend itself. I see it as an absolute exercise in willful, reckless destruction, a destruction of lives, destruction of massive amounts of American military hardware, a destruction of America’s reputation. But I also think what the president of the United States says matters. And you can’t just excuse something on the basis, on the argument: Oh, it’s a clever negotiating strategy. First of all, it was a stupid, lousy negotiating strategy that has ended up with the United States much weaker than it was. But even if it were, I don’t think that the ends justify the means in situations like this, and certainly not when the things you say deeply erode your credibility, your moral reputation, the core of your values, I think those things are real. And throwing them away for momentary gain in some pokerlike negotiation isn’t worth the price.