Iran-US Military Conflict Totally Off the Table Now: Analyst

In an interview with the Iranian news website Entekhab, Hassan Beheshtipour said Trump, by no means, has a political and logical mindset in his assumptions and in the way he sees domestic and foreign policy.

“He is a person who became President with just an economic and no political background. So, he basically has no understanding of the issue of talks with Iran. The most important sign of this could be assessed by considering the negotiations that led to the conclusion of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal,” he said.

“The Iran nuclear deal was the result of 12 years of initial negotiations plus two and a half years of intense talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries,” he said.

“How Trump intends to reach agreement with Iran in a week or in a month would be more based on imaginations and would only be an election campaign ploy,” the expert added.
Beheshtipour also expressed his views on the future of Iran-US relations if Trump wins in the elections and takes over the reins at the White House again.

“I believe if Trump is re-elected, we will see the White House pursue its current policy for another four years. The only different point may be the adoption of newer tactics, which would not mean a change in the US government’s strategy,” he said.

In another part of his interview, the expert weighed in on the presumed possibility of military confrontation between Iran and the United States during the second term of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Beheshtipour is of the conviction that Trump will, no means, seek a military conflict with Iran and will not take such a risk.

“Under the current circumstances when over 230 thousand people in the US have lost their lives to the coronavirus pandemic, it seems unlikely that Washington has what it takes to launch a military war,” he said.”

“A war which would be easy to start, but whose end would be out of the US control, would be very costly for the United States,” Beheshtipour added.
“Definitely, any military confrontation between Tehran and Washington will lead to a regional war,” he noted.

“The reality is that the ‘maximum pressure’ policy is not that effective, either, because in the future, supposing that Trump is re-elected President, we can predict two scenarios,” he said.
“One is that the current strategy of sanctioning individuals and small companies will continue, and the other would be that we will see a change in the US approach and Washington would move toward détente and adopting a softer approach vis-à-vis Iran,” he added.

“During their second term, most US presidents tried to make history and sought to have something go down in history in their name. Trump, too, may move in that path to leave behind a positive view of himself. So, there is a possibility, to some extent, of reaching a compromise with Iran. However, the chances of such a scenario happening are very slim,” the analyst noted.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Beheshtipour refuted speculations inside Iran that Tehran is acting passively in dealing with the US.

“Iran has its own special tools to deal with the United States, and the hypothesis that Trump would get more emboldened in dealing with Iran during his second term is incorrect,” he said.
“During his first term as president, Trump tried his utmost [to counter Iran]. The most significant action he took was the illegal assassination of General Soleimani. If he wins a second four-year term, Trump is likely to move forward with his policy of maintaining maximum pressure in order to make Iran implode,” he said.