Trump's Foreign Policy with North Korea and Iran
Foreign policy by tweet leading to an impromptu meeting leading to a historic walk into North Korea. Then, arms build up with the USN and airforce in the Persian Gulf zone and Hormuz Straits leading to the Iranians downing an American $2 million dollar drone that leads to even more sanctions and even more threats from Iran.
This is how President Trump is dealing with two of America's threats. It is like night and day. Is this a strategy of if you are nice, I will be nice and we can make a wonderful economic deal, or, just Trump's disdain of the Iranian government and hopes that the Iranian people will up rise and overthrow the regime and its nuclear ambitions? The Iranians do not trust Trump at all and therefore will not even think about talking.
With North Korea, the strategy has now realized what the truth was always going to be, that is, NK will never get rid of their nukes, but may freeze any more missile tests or expansion. In essence, NK will be recognized as a nuclear state. If this is Trump's strategy, NK would get to keep their current stockpiles of nukes and be rewarded with the economic perks Trump uses to lure NK into a treaty. A treaty destined to be cheated on by NK, if history shows us anything. If this is how it all ends, after all the photo ops and love letters between them, then it failed. At best, you can call it a success of containment.
Iran and NK are allied. They exchange nuclear technology and missile knowledge for a price. Much of Iran's nuclear technology came from NK, as did many of the missiles. Iran is watching how the NK-Trump relationship is working and what it may yield. But Trump's policy against Iran is much more harsh and seems to be not working as expected. This may change after more time elapses, but dealing with the Iranians is far more dangerous because of their proxies in the Middle East and Yemen. They are more dangerous due to geographic locations close to the world's oil and shipping lanes. They don't need to attack the US, they just need to conduct small strikes on oil infrastructure that have huge repercussions for the region and world. They can close the Hormuz Straits and even if just for a day, the impact on the oil markets would be great. They have their proxy forces in Iraq using drones to attack Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Dealing with Iran is a total different game. Trump's maximum pressure may work on Iran or not, but clearly he likes to use the economic lure to get either power to the table. It may not be enough.
