A Dark Shadow Looms over Trump’s Attempt to Woo the Middle East

This month, regime sources suggested that the embassy plot had been carried out by a rebel faction from within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its overseas terror militia, to derail nuclear talks with the United States. Given the intensity of control exerted over foreign operations by the totalitarian regime, as well as its pattern of previous denials, this seems unlikely. Kasra Aarabi, a leading Iran analyst and a director at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), described the claims as “categorically false,” as “every single operation—not least terror plots in the West—is personally signed off by the Ayatollah, who holds absolute authority in the system.” The disinformation is probably an attempt to blunt any British response. . . . “Before Trump was elected, the Iranians feared that he was serious about military action,” Aarabi, of UANI, says. “But the mood has now changed. The Iranians are becoming convinced that Trump is no longer interested in the military option. This could be a major miscalculation. But Tehran is feeling increasingly different to the 2003 Bush era, when Khamenei had calculated war was coming. The Iranians have calculated that if they got through the George W Bush era, when the United States was at peak interventionism and military strength, then they can get through the Trump era, not least as they perceive those around the current US president as isolationists.”