The Enemy of My Enemy Is My…Oh, Never Mind
By The New York Post this week ran an article highly critical of Donald Trump’s chief negotiator for Israel-Palestine, Iran, and Russia’s war on Ukraine, Steve Witkoff. Witkoff is a real estate buddy of Trump’s, so he must be one of the greatest negotiators ever!
Marco Rubio has been assigned more titles than Witkoff, but that’s pretty clearly with the assumption that he will do nothing with them. Witkoff’s assignment is different: two ongoing wars and one proposed war. Up until recently, Trump has claimed that he can end those wars.
The negotiations for selling or buying a building are different from the negotiations to end or head off a war. The subject matter of a building can be easily obtained from official records and inspections. The subject matter of wars is governance, nationalities and nationalism, economics, and the panoply of technology being used or not. You may add categories if you wish. Witkoff has experience in buying and selling buildings.
A video from a day or so before the Post article shows Witkoff entering a room to meet Vladimir Putin and sitting down at a table. Putin has three aides on his side, Witkoff one. You can hear him saying “Are you from the embassy?”
The woman presumably is his interpreter, as is one of the aides on Putin’s side of the table. The other two would be subject-matter experts.
Witkoff clearly has not met the interpreter before they sit down. This is a big mistake. When you work with an interpreter, you need to plan ahead. Simultaneous or sequential interpretation? How should the interpreter signal you when she thinks what Putin is saying is BS? How do you signal when you want to slow things down? And so on. It’s a team effort. Putin knows this, and he knows that Witkoff can be easily conned. Which we have seen in Witkoff’s witless encomiums of how kind Mr. Putin prayed for Trump after the assassination attempt.
The article says he’s also used Kremlin interpreters. That way, the Kremlin can later deny everything. Good job, Steve.
For a man who can’t recall the names of the Ukrainian districts occupied by Russia, you might expect subject-matter experts, but no! I can’t imagine what he is thinking. Maybe that the interpreter is taking notes and will know, but interpreters’ notes are for a different purpose.
The US delegation to the 2014-2015 talks that led to the JCPOA with Iran was 150 people, many of them scientists and engineers from the national laboratories, others expert on sanctions. The Europeans had delegations of their own. Does Witkoff even know what enrichment is? Or how you make plutonium? The JCPOA was extremely specific on the numbers and facilities involved.
Steve Witkoff is not qualified to lead one of these negotiations. Nobody could handle all three.
But the Post is usually a friend of Trump. Why this criticism? The article, particularly toward the end, tells us.
A significant source is the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, or FDD. FDD was a major opponent of the JCPOA and wants war with Iran. They are likely the source of Trump’s idea that Iran must give up all of its nuclear programs, including civilian, and rely on outside sources for fuel for their reactors. But they wanted war back in the days when the JCPOA was being negotiated, and there’s no reason to believe that has changed.
So of course they want to undercut even the bad job that Witkoff is doing, but I dunno, they might be better off to let him continue with no idea of what he’s doing.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner