We begin today’s roundup with a piece by Jeet Heer in The Nation on the Trump administration’s approach to Iran:
[T]he real key to Trump’s foreign policy is neither neo-isolationism nor subservience to Vladimir Putin but rather belligerent incoherence. As befits the man who styles himself the master of “the art of the deal,” Trump has an excessive faith in his own ability to glad-hand his way through thorny disputes with other power players. But Pompeo and Bolton have their own agenda, which boils down to shoring up American global hegemony by maximum aggression. The combination of Trump’s desire to be a wheeler-dealer on the world stage and the Pompeo/Bolton penchant for throwing America’s weight around has produced a foreign policy that is singularly confused, with a constant sending of mixed signals that could easily provoke conflict.
Kathy Gilsinan at The Atlantic:
Since May, Bolton has served as an occasional spokesman for the administration’s Iran policy and is actively helping drive it behind the scenes. But lost in the focus on Bolton’s views was [the new head of U.S. forces in the Middle East, General Kenneth] McKenzie’s role in helping shape the current policy. At a time when administration officials insist that they seek not war but diplomacy, America’s Iran policy is being steered to a large extent by the military.
McKenzie fills a vacuum at a moment when the Pentagon’s civilian leadership is either in temporary posts or in chaos, with multiple senior roles filled by acting officials, and one acting defense secretary just swapped out for another. And some see his prominent role as a cause for worry, even as other defense officials reportedly try to tamp down tensions. “He is shaping a public narrative around the Iran threat that is not a normal scenario for a combatant commander,” Kelly Magsamen, who worked with McKenzie as a senior defense official, told me. “I think it’s dangerous because this puts our military leadership in a scenario that’s highly political,” said Magsamen, who is now the vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.
