This week Trump announced the U.S. was withdrawing from the agreement where Iran agreed to stop developing nuclear weapons in return for the U.S. lifting economic sanctions. As part of the withdrawal, Trump re-imposed the sanctions on Iran.
Boeing, a U.S. company, immediately lost $20 billion in contracts it had signed with Iran to deliver passenger aircraft. That should help make America great again.
The withdrawal also will make it harder for Trump to reach his stated goal of an agreement with North Korea where it would denuclearize, unrealistic as that goal may be. With Trump withdrawing from the Iran agreement, North Korea will have no reason to believe the United States will keep its word.
The Iranian agreement, made with the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China and Russia, required two years of tough negotiating during the Obama administration.
Earlier Trump had twice decided to continue with the agreement, despite calling it the “worst deal ever negotiated.” As a man who has taken several of his companies into bankruptcy, one must concede his knowledge of bad deals.
International inspectors and the other signatories have all said Iran is in compliance with the agreement. Trump’s former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster urged Trump to keep the agreement. Trump, though, replaced them with hawks Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and the consequences are evident.
The agreement with Iran is far from perfect. It does not limit Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and it does not require Iran to end its support of terrorists. Still, the agreement froze Iran’s nuclear program, allowed ongoing inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities and created a foundation for further talks with Iran.
Several Israeli military and intelligence officials backed the accord, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the former heads of Mossad (Israel’s national intelligence agency) and Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security service). Not so current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu, who has fought against the agreement for years.
Netanyahu has agitated since 2010 for a military strike to end Iran’s nuclear program. There is precedent, as Israel bombed a suspected Syria nuclear reactor in 2007. Iran’s nuclear facilities, though, are deliberately buried far underground and large portions would likely would survive any attack. Of course, Netanyahu would want U.S. political support for that attack and, ideally, U.S. military participation. After Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the deal, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark) indicated that the U.S. would take military action against Iran if it restarted its nuclear program.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran, whose economy is in bad shape, would start enriching uranium again unless it was able to make sufficient business deals with the other countries that signed the agreement. Businesses and banks from those countries would have to avoid the resumed U.S. sanctions on Iran. That may be difficult. This morning National Security Adviser John Bolton indicated that the U.S. may apply sanctions against European countries that do business with Iran.
If Trump succeeds in preventing other countries from trading with Iran and Iran reactivates its nuclear program, the result may well be a military strike against Iran, which could lead to war or Iran directing terrorist strikes against the U.S. The Europeans are also exploring whether a broader agreement could be made with Iran. One fervently hopes that one way or the other the Europeans will be successful, since it does not seem the Trump administration can be.
