AARON PATRICK: Donald Trump is playing the Art of the Deal with Iran on a world scale
Using one specific technique, and a prolonged deadline for a lethal end goal, Donald Trump has managed to create a new issue for Australia.
In a 1987 book setting out his philosophical approach to business, relationships and life in general, Donald Trump boasted of his maximalist negotiating approach.
“My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward,” he wrote in The Art of Deal. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”
Today, the US President is enacting his approach on a global scale.
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The same day he claimed Iran requested a ceasefire, Mr Trump promised to intensify the war. “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” he said. “We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.”
Iran’s 90 million residents, even those who detest their theocratic rulers, might not be down with the prospect of caveman life. In other words, destroying Iranian society does not appear the best way to liberate it.
Anchoring high
The logical way to interpret Mr Trump’s boasts, threats and warnings are negotiating tactics developed over his career as a property developer. His life has been, in his eyes, one long negotiation with rivals and competitors.
The approach has a formal name in negotiation strategy: anchoring high. Studies have found that extreme positions taken at the start of negotiations, no matter how unrealistic, can shift the final outcome towards that starting point.
Extreme positions are Mr Trump’s speciality. But he always leaves open the possibility of compromise.
In today’s speech he said: “If there’s no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and properly simultaneously.”
This is not a new threat. Nor may it be an idle one. Mr Trump gave Iran 48 hours days on March 21 to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or promised to destroy its largest power plant, which happens to house a nuclear reactor.
The plant remains standing. Other threatened targets include desalination plants, oil wells, a major oil field and Kharg Island, an oil shipping terminal. With the exception of some minor damage to the island, all are intact.
The Strait
An indication of Mr Trump’s changing strategy might be his curious approach today to the partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest waterways.
No demand was made to free one of the world’s most important trade routes and end a blockade that has made millions, perhaps billions, of people poorer through higher prices for oil, gas and fertiliser.
Mr Trump effectively outsourced the job to the rest of the world, declaring America does not import oil through the narrow sea lane and “won’t be taking any in the future.”
“It will just open up naturally,” he said.
Despite the easy-sounding prediction, he said nations dependent on the strait, which include Australia and most of the Asia-Pacific, “must grab it”.
“They can do it easily,” he said. “We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on.”
The tolls
The comments suggest Mr Trump may have concluded securing the Strait of Hormuz by force is not practical — a view held by many military experts. By removing the end of the blockade from American’s demands, Mr Trump would be able to declare victory over Iran while it persists.
The Iranians would be able to charge huge tolls on ships to pass, keeping prices across the world higher than they otherwise would be. The system would pay to rebuild their rocket arsenal and military infrastructure.
Australia, which has committed a military plane to help fight Iran, might find itself indirectly paying bribes to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to keep petrol stations stocked, farms running and factories working.
The Iranians are already preparing for the new trade order. A spokesman for the regime told the United States it would not regain access to the strait. “The Strait of Hormuz will certainly reopen, but not for you,” he said on social media.
