President Donald Trump’s move to decrease international assistance funds may boost his bargaining position as he seeks to limit Iran.
“I look at the USAID cutoff and the praise that the Iranians have given as part of President Trump’s negotiating skills,” EJ Kimball, director of Policy & Strategic Operations at the US-Israel Education Association, told AWN.
The statements follow Trump’s contentious decision to cease funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and fire the majority of USAID staff, as part of the administration’s goal to eliminate what it views unnecessary government expenditure.
Despite the controversy, the move has been praised by the Iranian regime, which has always considered US aid to Iran as a challenge to its leadership.
According to The Associated Press on Wednesday, Trump’s decision has been “lauded” in Iranian state media, which sees the cuts to foreign aid as a blow to pro-democracy campaigners who Iran feels have profited from US help.
Iran’s positive impression of Trump’s decision comes at a vital moment, with Trump just restarting the US’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and reinforcing the US position that Iran would never be permitted to develop nuclear weapons.
While Trump has used tough rhetoric against Iran in recent days, including a threat to “obliterate” the country if it carries out an alleged plot to murder him, he has also pushed the government to start discussing a “nuclear peace agreement” with the US.
“I want Iran to be a big and prosperous country, but it cannot possess a nuclear weapon. “Reports that the US, in collaboration with Israel, is going to blow Iran to smithereens are greatly exaggerated,” Trump said in a social media post Wednesday.
Kimball believes Trump may use the foreign assistance cuts as a negotiating point in such future discussions, saying that if the Iranians fail to negotiate an acceptable settlement, the president may reconsider and reinstate financing.
“I would say that he’s teasing the Iranians at the moment, knowing that really at any moment’s notice, he could immediately turn back on the spigot of funding to the opposition groups if he doesn’t feel like they’re acquiescing to his demands or negotiation,” according to Kimball.
“It seems to me that he’s got a carrot-and-stick approach with the Iranian regime, and pausing funding for regime critics, teasing a deal, but also threatening sanctions, and talking to Israel about a military strike and how Iran will not get nuclear weapons is part of his master negotiating skills to keep his opponents off balance,” Kimball told reporters.
In the end, Kimball believes Trump’s ultimate objective is to reach an agreement that will remove Iran’s nuclear program without putting US service troops in danger in another overseas fight.
“It’s been very clear he does not want to send U.S. troops to war, but he’s also not going to be soft about it and allow the taking of a bad deal to avoid war,” according to Kimball. “The end goal for President Trump is a deal that removes the threat that Iran poses to the United States, to Israel, to the region, and really to the entire world, not just in their nuclear program, but in their ballistic missile development and delivery systems to ensure that Iran can be great again.”
