Donald Trump has made the right move with Iran – let’s hope it continues

Mr Trump promised the American people that he would not lead them into another Middle Eastern conflict and he has thus far kept his word

Difficult as it may be to believe, but President Donald Trump has not only listened to his generals, he has exercised restraint and may even be seeking a peaceful path out of America’s escalating conflict with Iran.

Even more remarkably, the president has made public his decision to call off planned US airstrikes against Iranian radar and other military facilities. It would have been, he concedes, a “not proportionate” response. No one was killed when the US air force drone was shot down by the Iranians, possibly in their airspace, possibly in international airspace. According to Mr Trump, some 150 Iranians would have died in his retaliatory attack.

Mr Trump was right to call it off. He promised the American people that he would not lead them into another Middle Eastern conflict and he has thus far kept his word. Limited airstrikes on Syria last year, designed to curb President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, have been the limit of US direct action in the region. Of course the US has been arming and supplying Saudi and UAE forces in their cruel war in Yemen, itself a proxy battle with Iran. Mr Trump’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and Jerusalem as the state’s capital have also been deeply destabilising. But in avoiding another unending trauma such as America has suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr Trump has been as good as his word.

Clearly, cooler heads in the administration and on Capitol Hill have prevailed, and Mr Trump and his advisers have sensed, possibly through Omani or other back channels, that the Iranians would retaliate in turn for the air raids and loss of Iranian life. The giant US warships in the region are especially vulnerable to “swarming” assaults by the Iranian revolutionary guards’ swift powerboats. Further attacks on oil tankers from Saudi Arabia and the UAE emerging into the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman would also be a plausible consequence of American attacks. That, in turn, would ratchet up the Saudi-Iranian conflict. It would bring Iran and Saudi Arabia, long bitter religious and strategic rivals, closer to full-on war.

Such a conflagration would be in no one’s interests, and its consequences, particularly for the House of Saud, would be unpredictable. Iran would be even more determined to acquire a nuclear arsenal. If America thinks it has trouble enough containing Iran now, then it might also consider what a Saudi Arabia in a state of civil war or under the control of Islamist extremists might do to world peace, the price of a barrel of oil and the global economy. An international recession caused by an oil shock would be the last thing President Trump would like to see arriving as he enters re-election year.

Mysteriously, sources close to Mr Trump mentioned that the president “said he was against any war with Iran and wanted to talk to Tehran about various issues”. It rather suggests that, like North Korea, another state supposedly on the “axis of evil”, Mr Trump might be dreaming about some grand bargain with Iran, another face-to-face mission that might, after four decades, at last bring some amity to the US-Iran relationship.

It is something to hope for. The White House has already performed the first few manoeuvres in this established patter of diplomatic engagement a la Trump. We have had the war of words; the tearing-up of an existing hard-won treaty, the international Iran nuclear deal; and a ratcheting-up of hostilities and brinkmanship.

Now, perhaps will come the demarche, initially though minor official contacts and third-party intermediaries, before more senior officials become involved. It is certainly in both countries’ interests to lift the threat of war and, in due course, to resume what could be a highly fruitful economic and political relationship.

After so long it feels as though there is some god-given law that dictates that America and Iran must be forever enemies. But it is not true, and the two countries have enjoyed close partnership in the more distant past. As with the detente with Kim Jong-un, normalising relations with the ayatollahs would be a diplomatic coup, and one that has eluded all of Mr Trump’s predecessors back to Jimmy Carter. That’s the prize.