Since the parameters of the Iranian nuclear accord became apparent in 2014 until Donald Trump canceled the deal on May 8, Washington essentially divided into three camps: those who supported the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, those who thought it was a seriously deficient accord but didn’t have the stomach to challenge it since that would oblige them to accept the risk of another war in the Middle East, and those who opposed the accord and were prepared to accept the risk of conflict. The second group was probably the largest. A fair number of Democrats and Republicans, who really didn’t like what Barack Obama had wrought, took refuge there. Unquestionably, the smallest group in Washington was the last.
It is an odd political fate that the Republican presidential candidate who was so hostile to the Republican foreign-policy establishment’s internationalist spirit, who out-Obama-ed Obama in his desire to see America downsize its responsibilities and influence in the Middle East, took a decision that returns the United States to the region with a vengeance and draws a clear red line for military action against the mullahs. If the clerical regime were to attempt to reconnect a large number of its IR1 centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility or the still-unperfected IR2m machines at the buried-beneath-a-mountain Fordow site, President Trump would have to strike militarily or see America’s position collapse. It’s a decent guess that the more conventional Republican presidential candidates, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and even Lindsey Graham, who all ardently campaigned against the JCPOA, would have kept America in the agreement. They were, most likely, in Camp Number Two. Trump’s unorthodoxy, his vivid dislike of President Obama’s achievements, and his ability to live with messy situations have surely allowed him to act when others would have punted.
