Getting to know the mind and language of Trump’s chief negotiator: “Michael Anton”
Saeed Seifi, a university professor and strategic analyst, wrote in a special note titled “Rereading Michael Anton in the Mirror of Negotiations/Decoding the Antonist Approach in the Third Round of Muscat Negotiations” for a News Agency.
“Michael Anton,” the head of the US negotiating team in the third round of indirect talks with Iran, is not simply a negotiator but a psychological warfare planner in diplomacy who sees any negotiation as merely a tool to advance US interests, not a platform for compromise or lasting understanding.
“In a world where peace is sold with polished words, Michael Anton, with sharp words and reductionist concepts, seeks to surgically reconstruct the international order to keep the purest form of American interests alive under its skin. This is where the word dialogue becomes a tool for containment, not understanding.”
It was Friday evening when the news broke, Politico magazine quoted an American official as saying that Michael Anton would be the head of the US negotiating team in the third round of indirect talks with Iran. Michael Anton, who is currently the director of policy planning at the US State Department, was the spokesman for the White House National Security Council during Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2021. He is also a member of the National Security Council under George W. Bush, a former professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and the author of influential books and articles explaining “American Nationalism.”
Anton is one of the intellectual and political figures of the American neoconservative movement who has become one of the important theorists of the Trumpism movement in recent years. Anton is known among the American right-wing elite for his famous article titled “The Flight 93 Election”, in which he likened the 2016 election to “the attack on the cockpit of Flight 93”; meaning that either Trump should be elected or America should be lost. This article became known at the time as the political manifesto of the Trumpism movement.
However, what is important about Anton right now is his presence as the head of the US negotiating team in the third round of indirect talks with Iran, which has raised important questions for negotiators, experts, media activists, and everyone who follows the subject of the negotiations. The first and most important question for those who do not know enough is, who is Michael Anton?
What kind of foreign policy does Michael Anton represent as the brainchild of the American neo-Nazi movement? What is the message of his selection as the head of the American negotiating team in the third round of indirect talks with Iran? With Anton’s presence in the negotiation equation with Iran, what kind of logic will prevail at the negotiating table and what strategic consequences will it bring for Tehran? With what strategies can the Iranian negotiating team perform better against Anton’s self-interested and control-oriented logic and preserve its interests in this complex game?
In this note, the author intends to provide the audience with a more realistic and clearer picture of Michael Anton’s personality and also answer the above strategic questions at the same time as the third round of Muscat negotiations begins.
Michael Anton
Regardless of the information that was initially presented about Michael Anton based on his background and activities, what is important at present is his political personality and the perspective he has on the issues of the international system in general and the issue of Iran in particular.
The article “The Flight 93 Election,” published in September 2016, is one of the most controversial and influential political texts of contemporary American history by Michael Anton. In this article, Anton likened the election of Hillary Clinton to sitting in a falling plane, the only way to escape from which was to attack the cockpit (i.e., elect Trump). By creating this radical metaphor, he declared that the country could no longer be saved by the normal rules of politics. In this article, he attempted to mobilize public sentiment against the liberal-oriented political establishment and to legitimize Trump’s radical politics.
It should be noted that the number 93 in Anton’s article’s title refers to United Airlines Flight 93, which, according to existing accounts, was hijacked by al-Qaeda operatives and crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. On this flight, the passengers, after learning of the terrorists’ goal, which was to crash the plane into one of the symbols of the American government, decided to confront them and regain control of the plane. By choosing this title, Michael Anton portrays the 2016 presidential election as an emergency and existential situation for America and argues that Donald Trump’s victory in that election, like the action of the passengers on Flight 93, was a bold attempt to save the country from falling into the hands of the liberal elite. In his view, voting for Trump was not an ordinary political choice, but a saving reaction to the inevitable fall of America. Therefore, the number 93 in this title is not only a historical reference, but also a political metaphor to show the necessity of radical, urgent, and saving action by American citizens against the prevailing liberal trends.
In this article, he sought to introduce a framework for nationalist and confrontational politics, fundamentally considering dialogue and interaction to be fruitless and seeing salvation in confrontation. Such an attitude, in the negotiations between Iran and the United States, could push the framework of the game towards zero-zero, where either everything goes in favor of the United States or a defeat for both sides.