Former top U.S. diplomat deplores policy toward Iran ‘untethered to any coherent strategy’ via SkullduggeryPod
hard-liners in Tehran and contribute to military tensions in a way that will backfire against the U.S. — which was already happening this week, as news broke that Iran had shot down an American military drone.
The remarks came shortly after the announcement that the Iranian military had shot down a U.S. drone, but before Trump canceled a retaliatory strike at the last minute, with U.S. forces “cocked & loaded.” But Burns made clear he sees the escalation in military tensions between the two countries as an inevitable consequence of the decision to pull out of the agreement, which he had hammered out in secret, back-channel negotiations with the Tehran regime.
The critique by Burns, a 33-year veteran of the foreign service and former ambassador to Jordan and Russia, is not surprising. As he relates in his new book, “The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal,” he spent nearly two years on a top-secret mission to head off Tehran’s nuclear-weapons project, flying in unmarked airplanes and ducking into hotel service elevators to negotiate with Iranian officials who were deeply suspicious of U.S. intentions.
Trump abandoned the deal unilaterally, depriving the United States of the international leverage it had mustered and making the Iranians even less willing to agree to U.S. demands, he says.
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