What Iran Is Really Up To

In April 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—known more commonly as the Iran nuclear deal—was still to be formalized, but Republicans preparing to run for president in the following year were already denouncing it. At a public forum in New York City, the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius asked Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, whether he worried that one of these Republicans, if elected, might overturn the deal.

Zarif answered confidently that any successor to Barack Obama would be constrained by international law, by America’s commitments, formal and informal, to allies and partners, and by all the norms that governed relations among nations today. “I believe,” he said, “the United States will risk isolating itself in the world if there is an agreement and it decides to break it.” The result of any such action, he predicted, would be “chaos.”

Zarif’s comments prefigured the strategy that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is following today in his brinksmanship with President Trump. Playing on the fear, especially prevalent among European elites and American Democrats, that Trump is, precisely, an agent of chaos, Khamenei has taken a leaf from the book of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who in 2017 appeared at the World Economic Forum as the representative of enlightened globalism. “We should adhere to multilateralism to uphold the authority and efficacy of multilateral institutions,” Xi declared. “We should honor promises and abide by rules.”