Trump rolls the dice with big foreign policy week
President Trump drew rare praise this week from across the ideological spectrum for a trio of foreign policy moves: his return of three American hostages from North Korea, withdrawal from the controversial nuclear deal with Iran, and decision to hold talks with Kim Jong Un in Singapore next month.
The president has spent nearly a year fending off critics’ complaints about his temperament and nontraditional diplomacy, dating back to last August when he threatened to unleash “fire and fury” threat against the Kim regime amid heightened tensions with Pyongyang.
“All it’s going to do is bring us closer to some kind of serious confrontation,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had said of Trump’s comments at the time. But White House officials argued this week that Trump’s unmeasured comments about Kim, combined with his administration’s maximum pressure campaign, have already yielded historic results. They pointed to trips Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made to North Korea over the past three months, first to meet face-to-face with Kim and then to bring home the three Korean-American men who had spent 12 to 36 months in captivity.
“I appreciate Kim Jong Un doing this and allowing them to go,” Trump told reporters at the White House on his way to greet the prisoners before dawn Thursday morning. Hours later, he announced the date and location of his upcoming summit with Kim, saving administration officials the challenging optics of a U.S. president traveling to the Demilitarized Zone, widely perceived as the North Korean leader’s backyard, by instead agreeing to hold talks in a neutral place like Singapore.
The Southeast Asian city maintains a good relationship with the U.S., and is home to one of North Korea’s embassies, though diplomatic relations between Singapore and Pyongyang were left strained last February following the gruesome assassination of Kim’s half-brother at a Malaysian airport just hours away. The State Department later determined that North Korea ordered the hit on Kim Jong Nam, who was killed by a banned nerve agent.
Trump has appeared cautiously optimistic about the upcoming summit since announcing its location. But at a rally Thursday evening he reiterated his commitment to abandoning negotiations if at any point he believes Kim is disingenuous about denuclearization.
“I think it’s going to be a very big success. But my attitude is: If it isn’t, it isn’t. OK? You have to say that because you don’t know,” the president told supporters in Indiana.
Just as Trump prepares for high-pressure nuclear talks with Kim, his administration has been dealing with the potential return of Iran’s weapons program. The regime’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif announced Friday that he plans to meet with several countries in the coming weeks to try to salvage Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement, which Trump pulled the U.S. out of in a major speech on Tuesday. Zarif also said Tehran was preparing to restart its nuclear enrichment in the event the deal falls through.
Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement drew praise from Republicans and, in some cases, criticism from Democrats who once opposed the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
“With this decision, President Trump is risking U.S. national security, recklessly upending foundational partnerships with key U.S. allies in Europe and gambling with Israel’s security,” said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., previously one of the strongest critics of the agreement.
Trump on Tuesday said his administration had spent months engaging “extensively with our allies and partners around the world” to negotiate better terms for the agreement, but ultimately decided the deal was “defective at its core.” However, Trump said his administration will continue working with our allies “to find a real, comprehensive, and lasting solution to the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Not everything has gone smoothly since Trump announced his long-awaited decision on Iran. Less than 48 hours after Trump revealed his decision, Israel military officials struck dozens of Iranian targets in Syria in response to Tehran allegedly firing rockets into Israel’s Golan Heights.
Trump will spend the remainder of May doing his homework as he readies himself for the unprecedented summit with Kim, according to a senior White House official, who declined to say whether the administration expects North Korea to make any additional concessions before the meeting in Singapore. The president also announced earlier this week that he would not be making a trip overseas to attend the unveiling of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem next Monday.
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