Rahm Emanuel Attacks Trump’s Negotiations With Iran

Rahm Emanuel said Iran is “schooling” President Donald Trump on the art of the deal and laid out his recommendations for keeping the Strait of Hormuz open as the U.S. and Iran careen toward open conflict again.

The former Chicago mayor and presumptive 2028 presidential candidate laid out his vision for the strait, in addition to deciphering the U.S.’s relationship with NATO, in an interview with POLITICO's Gordon Repinski. The interview was conducted on the same day Trump announced that “Cease Fire is OVER!” after Iranian forces attacked shipping vessels traversing the strait this week, prompting the U.S. to respond with strikes of its own.

The president added Friday that talks with Iran continue despite the fighting.

Trump, Emanuel said, is acting out “because they’re teaching him and schooling him on the art of the negotiation.”

Emanuel’s comments largely focused on maintaining the smooth transit of petroleum through the strait, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil flows through, amid great uncertainty over its immediate future. Oil prices, which declined after the initial ceasefire was announced, rebounded this week amid the strikes.

Emanuel stressed that the strait should not be an “Iranian waterway” and said the U.S. could ask the United Nations-associated International Maritime Association to charge fees for passing through the strait that would go to all nations affected by the war — “meaning Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and Qatar” — for a multi-year period until permanent protocols are established.

“Not a fee that Iran charges for Iran,” Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, added. “Absolutely not."

And, in the long term, Emanuel said, countries in the region need to develop a pathway for oil that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz to prevent Iran from using its closure as a leverage during negotiations.

Doing this, he said, “would allow us to build resilience around the Strait of Hormuz, because if Iran does this once, you could solve it today, but trust me, you're not solving it permanently.”

Some strikes this week were explicitly conducted to impair Iran’s ability to “threaten freedom of navigation” in the strait, the Pentagon said. And at the NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday, Trump revived his past threat to take control of Kharg Island, through which roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports pass.