Intros

Welcome to Diplomatic, reporting on D.C. and foreign policy

July 26, 2020

100 days til the US election. 

But it has already been many weeks that I have been struck, as a journalist who covers U.S. foreign policy, at the growing impossibility of pretending that the Trump administration has a real foreign policy; (or even, that there really is a “Trump administration”). It is more a cast of characters, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who have their own individual, hardly-disguised, domestic political ambitions. Those are primarily, in the case of Pompeo—with an eye on a 2024 Republican presidential run—to constantly demonize and thump his chest about China and Iran.

Welcome to Diplomatic, my effort at chronicling what may be the last, dangerous days of the Trump administration, or, trying to survive covering the tragedy of its second term. 

I am Laura Rozen, and have served as diplomatic correspondent at Al-Monitor, foreign policy journalist at Politico and Foreign Policy magazine, where I launched the Cable blog in 2009 at the beginning of the Obama administration. I am also a member of the editorial board of Just Security. 

I have, in particular, intensively covered the Iran nuclear deal negotiations. Those culminated in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal between the United States, five other world powers and Iran, that the Trump administration is desperately trying to kill in the coming weeks before the US election, seemingly so there is nothing left for a possible Biden administration to try to revive should Trump be voted out. The other deal signatories—the UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China—as well as Iran, are trying to hold on to the not-yet carcass of the deal and keep it on life support, to see if it could possibly be revived and built upon should Trump be replaced. 

The next showdown will be the Trump administration’s effort, likely by mid September at the United Nations Security Council, to “snap back” UN sanctions on Iran, if it fails to get the UN body to extend an arms embargo on Iran that is due to expire in October. The goal may be to try to provoke Iran to take drastic measures in response that get it or other world powers to declare the nuclear deal dead. 

Stay tuned, subscribe, and I will offer reporting and observations on the coming drama, some curation, and welcome your thoughts and tips as well. Send to laura@diplomatic.substack.com

Best,

Laura