IRAN/MILITARY/NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “As the US crisis with Iran continues, carrying with it the frightening prospect of a possible military confrontation with Tehran, one question looms large. If Donald Trump can summit, negotiate and send self-described love letters to Kim Jong Un, one of the world’s last true authoritarians — a man whose country (like Iran) is on America’s state sponsors of terror list; who has up to an estimated 60 nuclear weapons; who has launched missiles at Japan and threatened South Korea; and whose record on human rights and abuses against his own people justifiably puts him in the evil category — why can’t he sit down with senior Iranian officials to figure a way out of the current crisis? The quick answer of course in the context of the current crisis is that having watched the United States withdraw from the 2015 nuclear accord and reimpose sanctions, the most recent of which are directed against the Supreme Leader, Tehran isn’t interested in talking, and the administration, tethered to its maximum pressure campaign, isn’t all that interested either right now, even though Trump has repeatedly offered to sit down with President Hassan Rouhani without preconditions.”
–Aaron David Miller, “If Trump can negotiate with Kim Jong Un, why not Iran?,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, June 28, 2019 3:22 pm