The G20 summit is happening at the moment in Osaka, Japan, as President Trump is expected to meet with the world’s biggest leaders in order to seek support for a new deal with Iran, but that might not happen because many of them still support the Obama-era nuclear deal.
Michael Rubin, a former Defense Department official who now serves as a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said:
“The Iranians believe a gamble on Democrats winning the White House would be worth the risk of filibustering the Trump administration. In short, there is a cost to us when there is no partisan solidarity on the foreign policy front.’’
After Iran took down an American spy drone in the Persian Gulf, Trump ordered an attack and canceled in the last moment saying that the attack could kill 150 people which is not proportional to an unmanned drone.
At the G20 summit, a gathering of the world’s largest economies, Trump will meet with the leaders of three of the countries that signed onto the landmark 2015 agreement with Iran – Germany, China, Russia – as well as Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, one of Trump’s only allies for tougher action against Iran. The deal’s other signatories, Britain and France, will also have delegations there, Politico reports.
One senior official from the Trump administration said:
‘’This is a chance for the president to engage with a number of different international leaders among our closest partners and allies, to obtain their support and to have discussions about how we can encourage Iran to enter into negotiations and to respond to the president’s diplomacy with diplomacy, instead of terrorism and nuclear blackmail.’’
Richard Nephew, a former sanctions expert at the State Department and National Security Council who helped negotiate the 2015 deal said:
“The U.S. internal views about a deal are split and that means getting to a consensus position for talks would be hard, especially if some in the U.S. government believe that the only deal worth having is one in which there is no Iranian nuclear program to speak of.’’
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