Trump is threatening to abrogate the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran by refusing to extend sanctions waivers when they expire on 12 May. A few weeks later he is due to hold an unprecedented summit with Kim Jong-un, at which he will pursue a nuclear deal with North Korea.
The outcome the US wants from that summit is for Pyongyang to renounce nuclear weapons and accept intrusive verification inspections. Those, however, are broadly the terms that Trump appears bent on rejecting in relation to Iran.
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The president has never sought to rationalise these two different approaches. But for there to be any coherence in his approach, it seems likely he will want an accord with North Korea that has none of the elements he has repeatedly identified as problematic in the Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action with Iran. It is flawed, in Trump’s eyes, because it does not address Iran’s missile development, its regional role and the fact that some of the JCPOA’s restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities expire over time.
This suggests Trump will be asking Kim to give up his ballistic missile programme and arms exports. Trump also seemed to imply on Tuesday that there would be no “sunset clauses” in the deal he intends to strike with Kim.
“You know, in seven years, that deal will have expired and Iran is free to go ahead and create nuclear weapons,” he told reporters.
He argued that if he did break with the JCPOA later this month it would send “the right message” to North Korea.
Deciphering what that message might be is complicated. The constraints imposed by the JCPOA are more enduring than the president suggested. The only restriction that will fall away by 2025 is a cap on the number of first-generation centrifuges Iran can spin.
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Iran’s total enrichment capacity would be unchanged until 2028. Other restrictions remain in place until 2035. The ban on developing any kind of nuclear weapons would be indefinite, as would the close monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Details aside, the thrust of Trump’s argument appears to be that, by rejecting an arms control deal because of its caveats and limitations, his hand will be strengthened in the negotiations with Kim. The North Korean leader will be aware that Trump will settle for nothing less than permanent nuclear and missile disarmament.
Trump believes he has the wind at his back, convinced his tough attitude towards North Korea, including military threats and a tough global sanctions programme, has forced Pyongyang to the negotiating table, despite all the warnings about brinkmanship from the critics.
So far, everything seems to be going Trump’s way. Kim was all charm at his meeting on Friday with the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, who has credited Trump with creating the right conditions for the summit and recommended him for the Nobel peace prize. According to Moon’s office, Kim has offered to surrender his nuclear weapons if the US promises not to invade.
Trump sees such North Korean offers as unprecedented and due entirely to his unorthodox style. If that is what Kim is offering, it would indeed be an extraordinary achievement. However, North Korea has promised to dismantle its nuclear programme twice before, in 1994 and 2005, and on both occasions its commitment was short-lived.
Sceptics say Trump is barrelling towards the summit with expectations that have been over-inflated, with the connivance of the the South Koreans. His disappointment at finding there is less on offer in return for more from the US could trigger a rapid escalation.
“Optimism about Korea will kill us all,” was the title of a foreign policy commentary by Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia non-proliferation programme at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Lewis believes the real offer on the table will be an acceptance of certain limits on nuclear and missile testing in return for US acceptance of the North Korean regime as a nuclear weapons state.
In this analysis, ripping up the JCPOA will only reinforce Pyongyang’s belief that the only thing it can trust is its own nuclear deterrent. And the suggestion by John Bolton, the new national security adviser, that the US administration was pursuing the “Libya model” for North Korea will only further entrench Pyongyang: Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear programme in 2003, and eight years later he was dead at the hands of Nato-backed Libyan rebels.
Bolton’s approach is based on the belief that America’s adversaries will bow to Washington’s demands rather than face regime change at the hands of US military might. If his bet is right, it is not outlandish to imagine Trump in Oslo, receiving his Nobel.
If the gamble goes wrong, however, and Trump’s asymmetric approaches to Iran and North Korea collide, the US could very soon find itself facing major conflicts on two fronts.
