TEHRAN – Wendy Sherman, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs who led the U.S. negotiating team that concluded the Iran nuclear agreement, says President Trump does not understand that “Iran has a culture of resistance that equates giving in to those kinds of public threats as surrender, and they won’t surrender.” “President Trump’s […]
TEHRAN – Wendy Sherman, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs who led the U.S. negotiating team that concluded the Iran nuclear agreement, says President Trump does not understand that “Iran has a culture of resistance that equates giving in to those kinds of public threats as surrender, and they won’t surrender.”
“President Trump’s diplomatic style is to thump adversaries over the head with threats, and then after beating them up offer to sit down to talk and try and seal a deal,” Sherman told Yahoo News in an interview published on Saturday.
The greater shortcoming of the Trump approach, she said, is that it lacks the detailed policy preparation and follow-through necessary to turn verbal agreements into binding international accords.
“Trump likes to make headlines with his tweets, and he favors the pomp and circumstance of summits, but with both Iran and North Korea, there is no sign that he has put in the advance work, or that his team has shown the persistence and precision that these complex deals demand,” she remarked.
“Trump just reverts to the same transactional approach he used in real estate, which led him into multiple bankruptcies. I worry that he will be similarly taken in on some of these geopolitical deals, and that is extremely dangerous.”
