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Source: https://spectator.com/article/you-cant-negotiate-with-iran/?rcp=true&set_edition=en
You Can't Negotiate with Iran
(Spectator-UK) Jason M. Brodsky - With the reimposition of the American naval blockade against Iran, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Washington and Tehran seems dead. Its demise reveals what the Islamic Republic has always been: an aggressive, terroristic power that has no interest in rejoining the community of nations. The Trump administration demonstrated with the MoU that it was willing to go big on sanctions relief for Iran. But this outstretched American hand was met once again with an Iranian clenched fist. Since 1979, the U.S. government under multiple administrations have engaged the Islamic Republic in the hopes of improving relations. But to no avail. Iran has tried to reset the rules of the region by asserting unilateral sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, responding aggressively to U.S. enforcement of freedom of navigation, and striking Israel over its attempts to neutralize Hizbullah. Conventional wisdom has framed the collapse of the MoU as due to drafting mistakes and bad negotiating, but that is a misreading. The agreement collapsed because of the nature of the Iranian regime as an international pariah, a regional bully, and a domestic dragnet that is not seeking peace. The regime in Iran does not view diplomacy as a means of solving problems with the U.S. but rather as an extension of its conflict with America. President Trump has had a consistent strategy all along: one of coercive diplomacy. The President lays out his demands, gives Iran an off-ramp, sometimes sets a deadline, tests their willingness to engage, and if they don't in good faith, he strikes. The defunct MoU is just another chapter of that same coercive diplomatic dance. It will continue until U.S. objectives are met. The writer is policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI).