Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor, Arkansas governor and presidential candidate, has lots of time in grade studying and watching Iran and its ruling ayatollahs.
U.S. talks with Iran, a fourth round that was scheduled for April 26, were postponed due to logistical and technical reasons.
Talks held in Rome the week prior were deemed “constructive” by both sides.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he fears a nuclear-armed Iran, has expressed concern the U.S. may be moving toward a “bad deal” with Iran, which from Israel’s position would be any deal that does not remove all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Netanyahu has proposed a “Libya-style agreement” where Iran’s nuclear facilities would be dismantled by Americans and with more Americans supervising the process, The Times of Israel reports.
Donald Trump’s administration imposed new sanctions on Iran on April 30 against illicit trade of petroleum and petrochemicals. The President has also threatened action against those buying Iranian oil or petrochemicals.
“But if I'm looking at 46 years of their rule, I’m not overly optimistic that they're just eager to sit down and that they would make a deal, and if they made it, would they keep it?” Huckabee said on a weekend Washington Watch interview.
“The honest answer when people say, ‘do you have any hope that this will result in some type of negotiated peace settlement with the Iranian government,’ all I can do is say, ‘I hope so, because I'd rather see that than war,’” Huckabee told show host Tony Perkins.
It’s hard for intelligence to get a clear read on Iran’s military capabilities in light of Israeli strikes against them within the last year.
“We don’t know” Iran’s strength, Huckabee said.
Hope for the talks, perhaps, would be more encouraging if there was some glimmer in Iran’s history with the ayatollahs that pointed to humility from its leaders, he said.
“They’ve been under the rule of the ayatollahs, and they’ve been very adamant that their goal is to destroy Israel and then destroy the United States. While they have said something like that for 46 years, they’ve put out two different plots trying to destroy President Trump,” Huckabee said.
Iranian plots to kill Trump
The Department of Justice last November disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Trump involving a man named Farhad Shakeri, who was tasked for the mission by a contact in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
In addition, U.S. intelligence officials earlier briefed Trump about a different suspected Iranian plot last fall, unrelated to two domestic attempts in the run-up to the Nov. 5 election, The Guardian reported.
Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s spokesperson, said the briefing concerned “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate (Trump) in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”
In addition to chaos, an assassination, from the Iranian perspective, would have the dual effect of avenging the death by a U.S. drone strike in 2020 of Qassem Soleimani, a general and leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force.
Iranian officials have openly stated their desire to avenge Soleimani’s death.
In a September post to Truth Social, Trump referenced a possible attack against him by Iran and praised congressional bipartisan support for additional Secret Service funding.
So, has enough time passed for the Trump administration, and the Iranians, to agree on something meaningful over coffee, tea and diplomacy?
“The President has been adamant that they're not going to get nuclear weapons. They're adamant they are. That's a stalemate. I think I know President Trump well enough to know, he's not kidding, they’re not going to get nuclear weapons. So, the question is, do they realize that?” Huckabee asked.
The next question is if Iranian leaders realize this, do they care?
“Do they risk the control of their regime just for the pride of saying they're going to push forward with something that they've been told by everyone in the region they're never going to have?” Huckabee asked.
Iran was on the brink of possible regime change less than 16 years ago with the Green Movement, a political uprising after a disputed election. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Tehran and other cities demanding that results be overturned and greater political freedoms allowed.
Obama’s Iranian mistake
Former President Barack Obama, after his time in office, expressed concern over his handling of those protests.
In a podcast interview in 2022, Obama admitted he made "a mistake" by not providing greater support for the Iranian people who demanded freedom of Islamic rulers.
In his memoir, he explained that he was advised at the time to proceed with caution or risk a rougher road in getting the Iranians to agree to restraints on their nuclear program.
“If he could have just said we support the people who are seeking to be free and to unshackle themselves from this totalitarian government, it might have been a tipping point,” Huckabee said. “Instead, he was totally silent, even as the young lady was murdered in the street, and blood was running out of her head. That picture kind of showed the end of the Green Movement.”
