Inside Steven Mnuchin’s ‘resistance’ to Trump’s Iran strategy

Op-ed by Josh Rogin @ WashingtonPost.com, Sept. 13

 [....] Several administration officials claim that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has found another way to “resist” the president’s maximum-pressure strategy on Iran: simply neglect to give the president a document he requested several weeks ago... Following a July 26 Principals Committee meeting on Iran, the Treasury Department was tasked with producing an options memo laying out possible sanctions on SWIFT, its board members or their banks. Almost two months later, the document is missing in action — which prevents Trump from making a decision."

"Even if SWIFT capitulates, there’s no assurance Iran will negotiate. Trump’s maximum-pressure strategy may fail. But we’ll never know if that’s the case if Trump isn’t able to actually implement maximum pressure, said Richard Goldberg, who wrote the original SWIFT sanctions legislation as an aide to Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). “The only hope for the president’s strategy to succeed is getting SWIFT to disconnect all the Iranian banks,” he said. “And if the Treasury Department waffles one iota on that mission, they are setting the president up for failure [....]

Report: Mattis Not Enough of a Suck-Up for Trump, May Be on the Way Out

By Benjamin Hart @ NYMag.com, Sept. 15

The New York Times reports that Secretary of Defense James Mattis, likely the most important moderating force in the Trump administration, has fallen from the president’s good graces, and may be sent packing after the midterm elections. It’s the latest in a string of articles detailing the once-untouchable Mattis’s reduced stature in the West Wing.

The Times notes that at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, the president and Mattis regularly ate together at the White House, a ritual that has disappeared as Trump grows (frighteningly) more confident about his foreign-policy instincts and more skeptical of the general [....]

Meanwhile, Mattis faces a new obstacle in super-hawk National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has appointed Mira Ricardel, an old adversary of Mattis’s, as his deputy. Ricardel helped block Mattis from hiring a career diplomat who had served in Democratic administrations. Bolton has enjoyed considerably warmer White House relations than Mattis in recent months, as the White House has undercut the defense secretary on issues like the cessation of Korean Peninsula war games.

Part of the Trump’s displeasure with Mattis stems from the vast gulf between them on matters of actual policy. For instance [....]