Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talk as they attend the conference on Peace and Security in the Middle East in Warsaw on Feb 14. | Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images Foreign Policy Iran tries to run out the clock as Trump bears down Even as U.S. officials pressured European allies this week to break with Tehran, there was little indication the Islamist regime is worried about survival.

WARSAW — The Trump administration is warning Iran’s Islamist rulers that, after 40 years, their time in power is almost up. But the Iranian government is betting Trump will be gone first.

Even as top Trump officials traveling in Europe this week threatened to hit Iran with more economic sanctions and pressured allies to break with Tehran, there was little indication that the country’s theocratic regime fears it is in mortal peril.


In fact, on the same day the Trump administration hosted a conference in Poland unofficially intended to rally global opposition against Tehran, Iran’s president was meeting his Russian and Turkish counterparts, in part to discuss new international financial mechanisms to evade U.S. sanctions.

Meanwhile, in Poland, Trump’s closest aides and a top ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unfurled unexpected comments that likely left Iran with even more leverage and incentive to run out the clock on the Republican president.

First, Netanyahu set off alarm bells with a tweet suggesting a coming “war” with Iran, undermining the administration’s effort to portray its Poland event as a peace conference. Then, Vice President Mike Pence went off script to demand that the Europeans quit the Iran nuclear deal, a call sure to be dismissed. It also did not go unnoticed that Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, called for regime change in Iran at a separate gathering in Warsaw.

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The developments come as a flock of Democrats have launched White House bids, a probe into Trump's 2016 campaign continues to encircle the president and Republicans wonder if Trump will face a primary challenge or even not run again.

“Both sides are waiting and hoping for regime change in one another’s countries, but the clock in Washington is running faster than the clock in Tehran,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group.

For now, Trump’s top advisers are certainly not willing to countenance the possibility that their boss may be a one-term president. Instead, the administration is doubling down on what it calls a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

But the conference in Warsaw — which faced numerous stumbles, including boycotts by allies and crucial players in the Middle East — cast serious doubt that the pressure campaign would succeed anytime soon.

For much of this week, the administration sought to capitalize on the 40th anniversary of the revolution that brought Islamists to power in Tehran. Trump himself sent out tweets in both Farsi and English slamming the regime.

“40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure,” he tweeted on Monday. “The long-suffering Iranian people deserve a much brighter future.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif replied with his own tweet, claiming the U.S. has shown “#40YearsofFailure to accept that Iranians will never return to submission.”

National security adviser John Bolton released a video message attacking Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "You are responsible for terrorizing your own people and terrorizing the world as a whole,” Bolton said. “I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy.”

But despite its heated rhetoric, the Trump administration still insists it is not seeking to oust the Iranian regime. Instead, it said, the regime must change its behavior.

Such assertions have proven tough to swallow for U.S. allies, especially Britain, France and Germany. The three countries have worked to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in the months since Trump abandoned it. And on Thursday, Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, flatly rejected the idea of Europeans ditching the deal.

“For us it is a matter of priority to keep implementing it at full," Mogherini said.

The Europeans have set up an economic mechanism called INSTEX that is designed to allow companies to do business with Iran without violating the U.S. sanctions Trump reimposed on the country after walking away from the nuclear deal. Under the deal, the Obama administration had rolled back economic sanctions in exchange for strict curbs on Iran's nuclear program.

Pence on Thursday slammed the financial work-around, calling it “an ill-advised step that will only strengthen Iran, weaken the E.U. and create still more distance between Europe and the United States.”

Supporters of the nuclear deal say its survival hinges on biding time — and especially on Tehran’s willingness to stick with the agreement, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

One ex-official who helped draft the deal said the Iranian government appears to be calibrating its approach by trying to gauge Trump’s political prospects.

“Iran is driving this in the sense that I think Iran believes that if it looks like Trump is not going to be reelected maybe they should stay where they are, and then resurrect some form of the JCPOA,” the ex-official said. “If it looks like Trump is going to get reelected, then it’s a different ballgame. So I think they are trying to assess what their best posture is.”

As evidence of Iran’s struggle to find the right balance, the ex-official pointed to threats last month by Iran nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi that Iran could enrich uranium up to 20 percent within four days — well above the 3.67 percent enrichment cap set in the JCPOA.

National security adviser John Bolton released a video message earlier this week attacking Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The ex-official said such proclamations were a way for the Iranian government to answer hardliners, including those in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are insisting their country should just abandon the deal in response to Trump’s withdrawal.

Such threats, the ex-official said, are “a way for them to say to the IRGC, ‘We’re being tough. We’re ... not going to get pushed around. We hold all the cards,’ while at the same time, not actually taking action that would abrogate the deal."

"Right now, the world is mad at the Trump administration, not mad at Iran," the ex-official added. "If they start doing things that undercut the deal, then Iran becomes the bad guy quite quickly.”

The Trump administration, too, has been trying to strike its own balance.

It is warning the world that Iran — through its sponsorship of terrorism, its human rights violations, its ballistic missile program and its military activity in neighboring countries — is a menace that must be confronted.

But it’s also trying to do so while insisting that Trump made the right move by walking away from what he deemed a terrible nuclear agreement. The latter is an argument that many U.S. allies don't support.

“For us, the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran is a matter of European security ... and we see it is working,” said Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, who skipped the Warsaw conference. "On other issues, we can work very closely together with the United States.”

Tensions between the U.S. and other countries were on full display throughout the Warsaw conference this week.

The gathering was originally designed to focus on Iran, but after it became clear many U.S. allies might not attend, the Trump administration sought to broaden the agenda to look at security and stability in the Middle East. Even then, many top European officials declined to participate.

Poland, which has been trying to curry favor with Trump for a variety of reasons, was a conference co-host. But the country officially still supports the Iran nuclear deal. Polish diplomats repeatedly had to explain that stance, making for several awkward, tongue-tied moments.

Netanyahu, perhaps America's most staunch supporter in its anti-Iran campaign, raised eyebrows before leaving for Warsaw when declared "Iran” would be the focus of the event, contradicting U.S. claims. Once at the event, Netanyahu again startled with a tweet saying he looked forward to sitting with Arab leaders to “advance the common interest of war with Iran." The tweet was later changed to say “combating" Iran, but Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, still lashed out at “Netanyahu's illusions.”

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin was hosting a rival gathering with Iran President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, further adding to the sense that U.S. influence in the Middle East is eroding.

At the Russian-hosted event in Sochi, Erdoğan, reportedly said that not only is Turkey willing to join the European's INSTEX financial vehicle, but it may also create a bilateral mechanism to facilitate trade with Iran.

Rouhani, for his part, tried to turn the tables by criticizing Washington. “While we are taking new steps for boosting stability in the region and fighting terrorism in Syria,” he said in a statement, “some who are sponsoring terrorists are hatching plots against the region in Warsaw.”

The main message out of Sochi, however, seemed to be that these three countries — far more than the Americans — would determine the future of the Middle East.

Back in Warsaw, Trump administration supporters stressed some of the strides made in holding the conference. For one thing, Israel’s leader was in the same space as a number of prominent Arab officials, all of whom have grown weary of Iran’s military assertiveness and other meddling throughout the Middle East.

The conference also gave Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner a venue to discuss his efforts to craft a new peace deal for the Israelis and Palestinians. Kushner told officials that the plan will likely be unveiled after Israeli elections in April.

Toward the end of the conference, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted that more than 60 countries sent representatives to the event.

“No country, no country spoke out and denied any of the basic facts that we all had laid out about Iran — the threat it poses, the nature of the regime. It was unanimous,” he insisted.