Shinzo Abe’s humiliating mission in Iran was doomed to fail
Japan’s prime minister isn’t the first leader to regret trying to do Trump a favor – but he must have known he was taking a risk
Shinzo Abe’s trip to Tehran this week turned out to be one of more ill-fated mediation efforts of recent times.
What was billed as a grand gesture – the first Japanese leader to visit Iran in four decades – ended in humiliation, with split-screen television pictures showing Abe being told off by a stern supreme leader, while a thick plume of smoke rose from a burning Japanese tanker in the Gulf of Oman.