In the war of words between Trump and Iran's Rouhani, context is everything

Fresh from what many saw as his unwise love-in with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Donald Trump is back in Washington and back on the war path. Responding to a warning to the US from the Iranian president, that “war with Iran is the mother of all wars”, Trump tweeted in typically acerbic fashion that the US was more than ready to respond in kind.

“To Iranian President Rouhani: Never, ever threaten the United States again, or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before. We are no longer a country that will stand for your demented words of violence and death: be cautious!”

“So there,” he might have added.

At which point it is worth observing that those who forecast that the presidential office would exert its own constraints and force Donald Trump to abandon his Twitter account could not have been more wrong. Eighteen months into his tenure at the White House, the US president is as reckless in his social media utterances as ever. Any change has been with the audience, at least the third-party audience: it is becoming ever easier to tune out what once seemed incendiary remarks and dismiss them as just Trump’s way of doing things.

The most that can be expected in the way of a retreat is what we saw last week when he – sort of – went back on what he had said about believing the Russian president’s denials of election meddling rather than the charges of his own intelligence services. And sometimes, as with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un – hardly a shrinking violet in the rhetoric department – it has to be said that the Trump method seems to work.

In appearing to pick a fight – or rather escalate an existing fight – with Iran, however, Trump may be at risk of overreaching. Iran is not North Korea. Its sense of history is second to none; its diplomatic tradition is among the most sophisticated in the world; Iranians do not throw their words away. Dealing with Iran is not just a matter of shouting loudly and aggressively, then showing the current leader and his country due respect.

In one way, the stand-off may not be quite as perilous as it looks. President Rouhani’s remarks were given to an audience of Iranian diplomats, and the apparent threat to the United States was the second half of the sentence. What he actually said, according to the Iranian state news agency, was: “Americans should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars,” which leaves rather a different impression and suggests a door left deliberately open, not closed.

A similar caveat could be applied to remarks – cited as further evidence of deliberate US escalation – given by the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, at the weekend. He described the Iranian regime as resembling “the mafia more than a government”, and Iran’s president and foreign minister as “merely polished frontmen for the ayatollah’s international con-artistry”. The crucial detail to know here is that Pompeo was addressing a gathering of Iranian Americans, and regaling them with the sort of sentiments they were likely to relish. Context, as ever, is all.

That said, however, the context in and around Iran is what makes these latest expressions of US scorn and belligerence more dangerous than the average inflammatory outpouring from the current White House. It is not just because Iran is in almost every way, but especially diplomatically, the very opposite of North Korea, nor yet that any insults hurled by the US at President Rouhani risk strengthening his conservative adversaries in the regime, but because the US-Iran stand-off cannot be simply a bilateral dispute.

The reason for the quarrel in the first place is the US decision, spearheaded by Donald Trump, to withdraw from the multilateral nuclear agreement. So far, the evidence suggests, both the US and Iran have proceeded more cautiously than initial responses indicated. Despite warnings – apparently on the basis of old evidence from Israel – that Iran was flouting the agreement and continuing its nuclear development, this does not appear to be the case. Other signatories to the deal, notably the Europeans, are standing by it, as – it would appear – is Iran. The US timetable for imposing new sanctions extends by stages to November, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has suggested that there could be some slight room for manoeuvre.

Even if there were some diplomatic leeway, and both sides were interested in using it, however – which is not at all evident from Washington – the difficulty is that there is now a wider context. The war in Syria appears to be reaching its endgame. At the Helsinki summit with Trump, Putin announced that there had been preliminary agreement with the United States on cooperation over deliveries of humanitarian aid and potentially on post-war reconstruction.

This marked both a departure from the previous US position and a breach in Western solidarity (which had opposed all cooperation so long as president Bashar al-Assad remained in power). The evacuation, facilitated by Israel, of the much-lauded White Helmet rescuers and their families, seemed to confirm that the US and the UK were winding down their proxy involvement in the conflict and preparing – not before time – for the post-conflict stage.

That this marks a huge failure of Western, especially US and UK, policy in the region, hardly needs to be said. Less remarked upon, other than by Israel, however, is that a big beneficiary of the conflict in Syria is less Assad – whose regime remains fragile – than Iran, which has made territorial inroads in influence and military power. Saudi Arabia is another interested party, looking at the endgame in Syria with trepidation, and a considerable degree of self-interest.

Anything that threatens to upset the delicate equilibrium created by the Iran nuclear deal has now to be seen in this wider and infinitely more volatile context. If we are becoming inured to the dangers of Trump’s megaphone diplomacy, even giving it the benefit of the doubt as a sometimes valid way of doing things, that acceptance could come at the worst possible time. Iran could be the exception that proves the rule.