Trump raves about 'productive and professional' relationship with Iran

Donald Trump took to Truth Social Sunday morning to praise what he called a "much more professional and productive" relationship with Iran — the same country he spent years branding the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.

"Our relationship with Iran is becoming a much more professional and productive one," Trump wrote, describing ongoing nuclear negotiations as proceeding in "an orderly and constructive manner."

The statement landed with considerable whiplash for anyone who followed Trump's career. In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Obama-era nuclear deal and launched a "maximum pressure" campaign of crushing economic sanctions against Tehran. In January 2020, he ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, in a drone strike at Baghdad's international airport — an act that brought the two countries to the brink of open war.

Now, in his second term, Trump finds himself in the position of negotiating his own nuclear deal with the same government — and praising the relationship in terms his predecessor might have used.

The post also contained a swipe at Barack Obama — using his full middle name, a longtime Trump dog whistle — calling the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action "one of the worst deals ever made by our Country" and "a direct path to Iran developing a Nuclear Weapon."

But in the very same post, Trump described his own negotiations in terms nearly identical to what Obama-era diplomats might have said: both sides taking their time, getting it right, no rushing, proceeding carefully toward a verifiable agreement.

The contradiction did not go unnoticed. Earlier Sunday, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — Trump's own top diplomat during his first term — warned that the deal being floated "seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook," referring to key architects of Obama's Iran deal. White House communications director Steven Cheung responded by telling Pompeo to "shut his stupid mouth."

Trump closed his post with a notable flourish, suggesting that Iran might one day consider joining the Abraham Accords — the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states that Trump brokered in his first term.