Experts tore into President Donald Trump while discussing his botched handling of Iran peace talks with The Hill, with one lambasting him as "one of the worst negotiators in the world."
In a Wednesday morning report, The Hill said that Trump's much-hyped brand as a "master negotiator" and "dealmaker-in-chief" is imperiled, as the Iran war plods along after recently hitting the 100-day mark and peace talks continue to sputter. While Trump and his allies claim that a meaningful deal to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz is right around the corner, one never materializes, with new hostilities appearing to set things back regularly. Most recently, the U.S. carried out a new round of strikes against Iran on Tuesday after it was reported that Iranian forces had shot down an American Apache helicopter.
"The war, which Trump said would last between four to five weeks, hit its 100th day over the weekend," The Hill explained. "The president said Tuesday that a peace deal could be reached with Iran within the week, but Americans have heard similar comments dozens of times since the start of the operation."
Experts in foreign policy and diplomacy spoke with the outlet for its report, tearing into the Trump administration's woeful handling of the peace talks.
"Donald Trump is one of the worst negotiators in the world, and the public image of him is built completely on self-promotion of the idea that he knows how to make a deal,” Joe Cirincione, vice chair for the Center for International Policy’s board of directors, told The Hill. “What he does know is how to use power and intimidation to compel people to follow his will... I am hard pressed to think of any agreement where Trump has actually negotiated that has had a lasting impact."
"The real trick is to get something that is good enough to satisfy enough people that you can call it a success, in a sense, and I think that’s extraordinarily difficult,” Michael Singh, managing director and senior fellow at the Washington Institute, added in his own statement to the outlet, noting that Trump is "setting expectations too high for what he can accomplish in a short amount of time."
He continued: “I don’t think President Trump’s sort of self-described status as a master negotiator actually makes one whit of difference, I think that this is just objectively quite difficult, and it’s not really about negotiation skill, it’s about how you balance all those interests of parties who frankly aren’t even at the table negotiating."
