During President Trump’s first term, tensions between the U.S. and North Korea soared to their highest danger level in decades. Many feared that the two countries were perilously close to war. The crisis peaked in mid 2017. North Korea accelerated its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs while the U.S. responded with increasingly forceful rhetoric and military pressure.
Yet, regardless of Trump’s September 2017 threat at the United Nations General Assembly that North Korea would be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” and the belief that “little rocket man” Kim Jong Un was a certifiable global menace, Trump later “fell in love” with the Korean dictator.
Despite three meetings between Trump and Kim, an agreement was never reached. Yet nuclear weapons in the hands of an assumed maniac curiously disappeared as a problem and danger.
Trump’s Iran “excursion” this year was undertaken with the mistaken belief that Tehran was about to produce nuclear weapons, given the amount of enriched uranium it allegedly had. And although Trump assured the world that Iran’s nuclear capability had been “obliterated” nearly a year ago in the Midnight Hammer raid, somehow the danger was resurrected.
Iran’s ayatollahs and clerics were seen as fanatics for whom martyrdom was the preferred path to eternity. And, unlike North Korea, a nuclear Iran was a threat to the whole world that must be stopped.
Regardless, the “fire and fury” period remains one of the most volatile moments in US-North Korean relations since the end of the Korean War.
Of course, North Korea already had nuclear weapons. That made a profound difference in U.S. actions. Yet Kim was perceived as being at least as dangerous as the clerics in Tehran. What happened? And at some future date, will Trump fall in love with Iran’s current supreme leader?
Returning to the Korean 2017 crisis, Trump’s fiery rhetoric followed North Korean missile tests and claims that the country had developed a nuclear warhead capable of being mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile. Kim responded with his own threats, including a discussion of missile launches near the U.S. territory of Guam.
Behind the public exchanges, senior officials in both countries were preparing for the possibility of military conflict. The U.S. increased sanctions, conducted military exercises with South Korea and reportedly considered preventive military options. Analysts worried that miscommunication, miscalculation or an accidental military incident could provoke war.
Given North Korea’s growing nuclear capabilities and the large number of U.S. troops stationed on the Korean Peninsula, any conflict could have caused catastrophic casualties. However, despite the heated rhetoric, neither Washington nor Pyongyang were eager for war.
By early 2018, diplomacy replaced threats. South Korea helped facilitate talks. Trump and Kim agreed to a historic summit in Singapore in June 2018. The subsequent negotiations failed to achieve denuclearisation, despite Trump’s promises of economic assistance. The talks, however, ended the crisis.
Regardless, the “fire and fury” period remains one of the most volatile moments in U.S.-North Korean relations since the end of the Korean War.
Could a rapprochement happen with Iran? Many in both U.S. political parties argue that Iran has been at war with the U.S. and its Gulf neighbours since its 1979 revolution. In this view, Iran is the world’s greatest sponsor of terror in its support of Hamas and Hezbollah and its promises to destroy its nemesis, Israel.
The capture of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and imprisonment of 52 American hostages for 444 days, and the failed Desert One rescue raid, were further fuel for U.S. antagonism toward Iran. That in turn was exacerbated by the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra fiasco of buying arms from Iran for shipment to the Nicaraguan contras as a barter to free U.S. hostages in Lebanon. Reagan came close to impeachment.
Unfortunately, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was negotiated by the Obama administration in 2015 and, if followed by all parties, would have prevented Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons, was abrogated in Trump’s first term. The irony is that what may follow in ending this so-called excursion may not prove to be as binding as that agreement was.
Where this imbroglio is headed, no one knows. Trump may not fall in love with the Baby Ayatollah, but he may have reached an agreement. Conceivably, it could include the greater Middle East and eventually, the Abraham Accords with Israel.
Now that Trump has given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents lethal ammunition in declaring that he calls “all the shots” and controls Netanyahu, should the prime minister not be reelected, anything is possible.
But to repeat Winston Churchill: “Jaw, jaw, not war, war.”
The writer is a senior advisor at Washington, DC’s Atlantic Council and a published author. He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.