Trump will surprise us all and re-engage with Tehran – ex-State Dept exec

SS: Lately, all the important things in Syria are being decided in Ankara, Moscow and Tehran. The U.S., which was once keen to intervene, is mostly just watching the show right now. Is the current White House more cautious than the previous one, or just less powerful? 

LW: I think, both White Houses - Obama’s and Trump’s - have been with regard to Syria in particular cautious. I think, they are still being cautious in the Trump administration, but I would remind you that there are some twelve installations, if you will, that are U.S. installations in Syria, and that there’s no intention to move those elements out of Syria until, as one individual from the Pentagon put it, all Iranian elements are out of Syria, and he added parenthetically: “...and ISIS and other elements like ISIS are thoroughly defeated.” That tells me that regardless of what president Trump might want to have as a policy, which, I think, is to eventually leave Syria substantially, we are there, we are very much there. 

SS: Can we talk more about that - what is the current American goal in Syria? Under Obama, it did seem that America didn’t quite know what it wanted to do exactly. Does Trump know what he wants there? 

LW: That’s a good question. That’s a question I ask my students about everything from U.S.-Russia policy to U.S. policy with regard to Venezuela. No one knows and this the mystery of this administration, it’s a conundrum what Trump’s policy is from Monday to Tuesday, till the end of the week. So it’s very difficult other than listening to strident voices like those of John Bolton, a neoconservative nutcase in my view, or Mike Pompeo who’s not far from that definition, some other spokesperson for the administration, the only sane and sober one being in my estimation Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense, of course. With regard to Syria though, I think, President Obama’s strategy (and I actually had an occasion to talk to President Obama in the Roosevelt Room in November 2015, and got some inkling of this) was to admit that Bashar al-Assad was there, that essentially we had made a strategic error in interpreting his role in Syria, like we had interpreted Mubarak's role in Egypt. And that was wrong, because there was a sizeable portion, powerful portion of Syrian people who had supported Assad, not to mention his armed forces in majority. And so President Obama’s policy at that point was sort of patience to see how long it would take to restore Assad, and if eventually the United States could support that. I don’t know what Donald Trump’s policy is. But it looks at times like a continuation of that policy, with some different ingredients largely manufactured by outside players like Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Moscow, and to a certain extent Ayatollah and President Rouhani in Tehran, and, interestingly, the most insidious influence in the whole business - Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia.  

SS: But how does what you’re saying go along with airstrikes under the Trump administration on Syria?    

LW: Well, the airstrikes are essentially designed for tactical purposes, I think. I don’t see much strategy associated with them. Maybe you could say that they do operate tactically under this kind of strategic umbrella I just define roughly. But the strikes are to do tactical things, like protecting YPG forces who’ve been our most stalwart ally in Syria, to protect Kurds in general, who’ve been our allies throughout the region (Iraq, Iran, Syria), and to more or less eliminate those elements that, we thought, were associated directly with Islamic State terrorists. Now I realise that the incompetence of our intelligence agency, the CIA, the incompetence of some members of the Pentagon in terms of coordinating these actions have looked rather ambiguous and even stupid to the rest of the world when we found ourselves, for example, with the CIA on one side, the military on the other side, and neither of them were able to sort through the various groupings in Syria and decide which was al-Qaeda, which was Al-Qaeda affiliated, which was ISIS and which was genuine freedom fighters - I’m not at all sure there are any of those in Syria. It was a hard sorting. 

SS: But I really meant airstrikes on Assad, not on ISIS. 

LW: I don’t know if we’ve been conducting airstrikes on Assad’s forces, such as they are regular forces.      

SS: That happened twice.         

LW: If we have, I think, it’s been accidental. The deconfliction between Russian airpower, U.S. airpower, Syrian airpower has been quite good. The co-operation between Russia, Syria and the United States has been quite good at the tactical level. And that’s why we haven’t seen more of these error bombings or a shootdown of a Russian plane or a U.S. plane or a Syrian plane. The recent shootdown of the Israeli planes, I think, Vladimir Putin has explained quite well for my military attitude. I think, the Israeli planes were hiding behind the Russian plane, and it got shot down as a result by Syrian batteries. 

SS: ISIS was cleared out of its main strongholds relatively quickly, once the offensives started, but now the coalition is pounding a small pocket near Deir-ez-Zor for months and months, with little progress. Can you tell me, as a military man, why has the coalition success been stalled at this point? 

LW: I think, what we’re seeing, more so than anywhere, is those who have been hustled off, bussed, trucked, bribed to go to Idlib and the surrounding area, that’s where the real potency is for the situation right now. That’s where supposedly Erdogan and Putin have worked out a deal - we’re yet to see how it’s going to manifest itself. But it’s a dangerous thing what we’re doing there, because there are quite a few fighters who are battle-tested, and who, if we don’t take care of them one way or another, are going to move off somewhere else and constitute a terrorist threat wherever they do move to: whether it’s Turkey, back to China, somewhere in the region, back to the United States, back to Europe or whatever. That’s the group that I’m worried about and I’m pretty sure that I’m right when I say that’s the group the Pentagon is worried about too. I suspect that’s the group Assad is also worried about.       

SS: The settlement of Assad-rebel fight is far far ahead on the horizon, but the U.S. still has a foot in the game with the Kurdish-led forces. Will Washington try to use its allies in the fight against Assad, do you think it could come to that? 

LW: I think, we have made the strategic decision that Assad is a legitimate ruler of Syria and is going to be there for the time being. I think we have made this decision. If we haven’t then we’re dumb. That would be a very smart decision to be made and, I think, we’ve made it. Now, how that will play out as the United States tries to at least maintain the vestige of influence in Syria, is anybody’s guess. But, as I pointed out, I think, the biggest impediment to that being worked out in the benefit of the Syrian people who, I might point out, are sick and tired of this war - I mean, I’m getting reports from Damascus and elsewhere from people who are what you might call the cognoscenti, the intelligenzia, the people who are behind Assad, the people who support Syria returning to some sort of peace and stability, and they are sick and tired of this war, they want it over, they wanted it over last week. That’s what we need to shoot for. We need to shoot for empowering these people and in essence empowering the Syrian regime so that it can re-establish control over the state. And we need to get the other elements out. That includes the Saudis, the Iranians and everyone else messing around in Syria. The most dangerous element in that regard is those ten thousand or so battle-hardened people who are in the Idlib province and right now are more or less being protected by Erdogan and the Turkish military.     

SS: And then there’s the Iran factor. Half a year ago Trump declared the U.S. troops’ withdrawal from Syria. But now John Bolton says that U.S. soldiers will not pull out from Syria until Iran withdraws its forces - like you said. Has the U.S. strategy in Syria officially altered from combating terrorists to countering Iran? Or is this the part of the whole anti-Iran drive? 

LW: I think, that’s part of it. If you know the neoconservative philosophy like I know the neoconservative philosophy, you know that their big target is Iran. Their fascination, their fixation is Iran. I think, they might we getting ready to be surprised. I put my magic hat on and say that, I think, we’re going to have a Singapore moment with regard to Iran and, I think, the President is going to turn the tables on John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and the rest of those nutcases in the administration. I think, we’re going to have an extended invitation to Rouhani, to Zarif, and Trump is going to find the city, Geneva comes to mind, and they are going to sit down if Rouhani and Zarif will eventually accept, and Trump is going to go to that meeting and is going to sit down with these Iranian leaders and is then going to say right in front of the U.S. midterm elections, so it’ll to be a November surprise, he’s going to say: “I have just worked out a deal, it’s better than the deal President Obama worked out, and we’re going to talk about it further.” And he’s going to hope that it has a really dynamic positive political impact on the midterm elections, because right now in this country it’s looking like the Republicans are sure going to lose the House and maybe the Senate... 

SS: Well, that’s one option, but the second option could be like his meeting with Putin in Helsinki, where he was willing to actually make peace. But then the whole American establishment turned so much against him that he cannot even breathe towards Russia anymore. So that could actually worsen his relations with Iran even more if he goes for a meeting... 

LW: The American establishment is not against peace. Who is against peace are the neoconservatives in the establishment. President Trump would have no problem telling John Bolton to walk out the door and getting a fourth national security adviser. There’s no doubt in my mind that he can tell John Bolton to walk out the door and for that matter anybody else in the administration too. In that respect that’s a string in this President, and, God knows, there are few strings of this President. But that is one. So I have no problem in visioning him telling the neoconservatives to take a hike. The President might be besieged in a political peril, but he’s still not a dumb man.        

SS: So, Colonel, before America went to war in Iraq, Bush spent 2 years trying to make us believe Saddam was in bed with Osama bin Laden. Right now, there’s no PR campaign of this magnitude going on, so war isn’t really that likely? 

LW: Well, I beg to differ with you slightly. I agree that it’s not quite the momentum that it had in 2002 and early 2003, especially the moment of Colin Powell going to the United Nations Security Council, but there’s a campaign going on, and it’s being led from the outside by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies - Mark Dubowits, John Hannah and others in that group, - who are essentially working for the United Arab Emirates and Israel in trying to foment the war or at least military action against, or at the very best the effective and immediate regime change in Tehran. And their campaign is pretty relentless. If you’re back here reading the Internet, reading other things than The New York Times and The Washington Post, which I don’t even bother to read anymore, you’ll understand that this campaign is early effective. And, as I said, it’s on behalf of the UAE and Israel. You even have people meeting with this ambassador from the UAE Al-Otaiba in Washington and talking about things like the UAE taking over al-Udeid air base, which is, as you know, probably the largest U.S. Air Force base in the region and probably in the world. So there are machinations going on in Washington beneath the stage, if you will. And these are aimed at bringing about regime change in Iran, and frankly these people don’t care how it happens  - a military action or a combination of military and economic actions or whatever - they just want regime change in Iran.     

SS: American forces are spread thin all over the world, soldiers are doing 6, 7 tours of duty in Afghanistan. Air strikes alone will not be enough to overwhelm the Iranian military, we know that. So where are the boots that will win this war for Mr. Bolton? 

LW: I think, they believe that, as John Bolton has said just the other day, “crippling sanctions” are going to cause so much turmoil, depression of the currency, main items not available to the Iranian people, even food and humanitarian and medical supplies are being impacted. I think, they hope that this tension causes a somewhat different Iranian population right now than, let’s say, in 2009 during the green revolution, to rise up and overthrow the theocracy. That’s their best solution, if you will. But I think, they also see in the background pressure on Iran, Hezbollah and Iranian agents in Syria, pressure on Iran around the world, pressure on Iran in Iraq, especially Southern Iraq. And ultimately perhaps even military action against Iran in company with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and perhaps even Israel is being ultimately the thing they will turn to if regime change doesn’t come about some other way. That’s why I liken it to 2002-2003, it looks like the same roadmap to me all over again.    

SS: Can America afford to deal with Iran and cause instability there if wars in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan are not even over yet? 

LW: Asking my opinion, absolutely no, we can’t. Looking at 22 trillion dollars in debt, looking at the interest payment on that debt that’s going to equal the defense budget next year, looking at almost no discretionary federal spending, when you put these two things together - the defense budget and the interest payment on the debt - no, we can’t afford it. But we seem to have leaders who, like Dick Cheney in 2002, believe that deficits don’t matter, believe that as long as we control the world’s transactional currency, its reserve currency - the dollar, - we can do anything that we want to. And, of course, I’m fully aware of de-dollarisation movement in the world led from Moscow and Beijing. I’m aware of the speech that President Putin made, I believe, in Vladivostok recently, and I’m aware of what that my mean ultimately. But I’m in the country whose leaders by and large do not seem to understand that, do not seem to understand basic economics and finance. So the answer to your question is they think they can afford it. 

SS: Well, that and also Iran also enjoys good relations with Russia and China, who have borders in the region, vital interests there. What kind of reaction will a bombing or other hostile action towards Iran provoke? 

LW: I think, it will provoke what is already happening with this President and this administration, and that is a deepening of the isolation of the United States from the rest of the world. If you listened to Federica Mogherini the other day, the Foreign Affairs representative, as it were, for the European Union, and you listen to the passion in her voice as she... I’ve listened to her staff on the telephone and heard her passion as she detailed how Europe was going to try to avoid the U.S. sanctions and still function at least partly with Iran so as to preserve the JCPOA, then you understand how isolated the United States is becoming. It’s very dangerous and I hope we’ll get a new president very soon who has a completely different agenda with regards to the U.S. foreign security policy and its position in the world, because this isolation we’re putting ourselves in, self-isolation, as it were, is not good for us, it’s not good for the world either. 

SS: Well, he’s there for at least two other years.

LW: You might be wrong, he might not be there for two more years. 

SS: Let’s just wait and see. We never thought he would win. So let’s just wait and see. France, Britain and Germany as well as Russia and China are trying really hard to keep the nuclear deal alive by inventing ways to soften the blow of United States’ sanctions for Iran. Former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana believes that EU’s efforts are doomed to fail because of the U.S. international financial clout. Do you agree with Solana? 

LW: Solana might be right because what I see in the European Union is a gross domestic product that equals our own. I see 400 million people, I see more money in their banks than in the U.S. and China combined. I see more latent and potential power possibly than in any other country in the world, even in Russia, China, Japan and U.S. And yet I see no political cohesion. And so all that power just gets dissipated. They have no political power because they cannot bring Berlin, Paris, London, Brussels and all the rest together in a political way. So as long as that’s the case I kind of agree with Solana. 

SS: U.S. sanctions targeting Iran’s oil exports will come into force in November and Trump promises more sanctions, tougher than before. You’ve just said that neoconservatives will use sanctions to pressure Iran. But what makes this administration think that Iran will finally bow down to this pressure and won’t go out of the deal with a bang to restart its nuclear programme? 

LW: I think, they think that the tensions in the Iranian population are much greater now and that it would just take maybe a little bit of a sanction tightening here and there or whatever and particularly the ones that are going to affect the morning of November 5, to do it. I think, they are wrong. I think, Iran is far more resilient than that. I think, you are looking at not quite the ability that Saddam Hussein had, for example, to bust sanctions all the time to sell his oil on the black market, if not sometimes on the white market. And I think, you’re looking at Russia and China, and most likely, India and other countries who will operate on the black and the white market and keep Iran solvent. So I think, their expectations in that regard are wrong. So what are they going to do then? That’s my concern. If Iran is able because of Russia, China and other countries’ assistance and maybe even the EU’s partial assistance, when Iran is able to stand up to the Boltons and the Pompeos, what do we do then? That’s what I’m concerned about. 

SS: I just don’t get it, why is America so hell-bent on fighting Iran, for decades and decades now? I really don’t get the reasons for all this anti-Iran sentiment. Nothing stops these two countries from living normally with each other, like it has been under the Shah. And when they use the pretext of terrorism - you just have to see one Shia terrorist blowing up something in Paris, Madrid, London, Brussels or Berlin… What is this all about? 

LW: If you find an answer to this question please email me. I ask the same question. I did the war-planning for the principal force provider command in the United States’ military for years. I worked on this region for years. I do not understand this. Saudi Arabia is the greater state-sponsor of terrorism in the world still today and yet we call Iran that. We lie when we say that. We outright blatantly lie we say that. Moreover we know we lie. So I don’t understand this either. I’m as perplexed as you’re at this fascination we have for the tyranny in Riyadh and the hatred we have for the theocracy partial democracy in Tehran. In geopolitical and in geostrategic terms it makes no sense whatsoever. 

SS: Iran has helped its neighbour Iraq withstand the onslaught of ISIS. Now the U.S. needs Iranian help in Iraq to stave off future ISIS threats and to stabilise the country. Can Washington confront Iran in some areas and still cooperate in others? 

LW: We were doing that. We were doing that even in the second Bush administration. I should say we were doing it majorly in the first Bush administration, particularly in Afghanistan right after 9/11. We were co-operating with Iran and Iran was co-operating with us. And the results were pretty positive. Has there been co-operation sense? On and off yes, particularly in the Obama administration. But it’s been very limited, very constrained and it never led to anything. And what the JCPOA diplomacy was supposed to lead to according to John Kerry, Wendy Sherman and President Obama himself was a more robust set of talks about everything from banking to finance, to fixing Iran’s financial system, to ballistic missiles and terrorism, you name it. We were going to talk about all those things and we were going to do that in a diplomatic manner, and we were going to do that basically with diplomats. That was the plan that the JCPOA negotiations would to lead to that. Then Donald Trump came in and closed the door completely. I don’t think we have talked to Iran substantially since Donald Trump took the oath of office. Again, perplexing, I do not understand that approach.    
SS: Alright. Colonel Wilkerson, thank you for this interview. We were talking to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, discussing the U.S. Middle East policies.