President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the disastrous Iran nuclear agreement negotiated by former President Barack Obama and reimpose sanctions was an important step toward a needed policy reset with one of America’s most malicious enemies.
[FULL REMARKS: Trump’s announcement withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal]
In taking this action, Trump recognized that the 2015 nuclear deal imposed without the approval of Congress had a fatal flaw. In exchange for Iran making temporary concessions on its nuclear program, the U.S. and the world’s great powers agreed to provide tens of billions of dollars of economic relief and to turn a blind eye to the regime’s other malignant activities.
The existence of the nuclear deal has not moderated Iran, only made it a more aggressive destabilizing force in the Middle East. Since the deal was struck, it has built up its military, imprisoned Americans, tested ballistic missiles, continued to finance terrorism, and increased its interference in Syria. In Yemen, Iran violated an arms embargo and is believed to have allowed Houthi rebels to obtain missiles, one of which was fired into Saudi Arabia.
Ever since a desperate Obama started negotiating the deal, Washington has been held hostage by fear that Iran could withdraw, thus limiting the options of policymakers. So a deal that was supposed to constrain Iran instead hobbled America.
We’re still learning all of the ways that Obama myopically subverted our national interests in first seeking and then propping up his deal. Last year, a detailed report found that “in its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States.”
Despite all of these concessions, the deal would only limit Iranian nuclear activities for a little over a decade. Even if Iran were to follow every letter of the deal, it could use the next decade to build its conventional military and develop ballistic missiles and then ramp back up its nuclear program, giving it both nuclear material and the means to deliver it. The bombshell Israeli intelligence find announced last week demonstrated that Iran not only lied to the international community about its past nuclear weapons development, but also kept all its research, presumably, for use at a later date. The deal relies on self-inspection of Iranian military sites such as Parchin, despite evidence of past nuclear activity.
In his speech, one of the best made about and to Iran by an American president, Trump put the world on notice that the U.S. would no longer be hamstrung by a bad deal. “America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail,” Trump declared.
Critics of Trump’s decision have made a series of arguments. One is that by pulling out of the deal, the U.S. has lost leverage. Had Trump left open the prospect of staying in the deal, this argument goes, he could have continued to push for a better deal with Europeans. The problem is that this strategy has already been exhausted. Last October and then this January, Trump called on Congress and European allies to fix a number of flaws in the deal. In January, he put them on notice that they would have 120 days to fix it or the U.S. would withdraw. Europeans only offered cosmetic tweaks that would have still enabled Iran to develop ballistic missiles and would have preserved the sunset clause. Had Trump again extended the deal and backed off his threat, nobody in Europe would take him seriously or feel the need to offer any new concessions.
By leaving the deal, Trump is no longer constrained by its flaws, and his move could deal a crippling blow to the regime. Right now, there have been nationwide protests and labor unrest, with people challenging the radical Islamic regime. It’s possible the mullahs are losing their grip on the population, as the economic benefits of the deal have been pumped into the military while massive unemployment, inflation, and a currency crisis wreak havoc with Iranians’ everyday lives.
As a result of Trump’s decision, the U.S. will reimpose a series of sanctions on the Iranian economy and banking sector and reserve the right to go after not only U.S. companies that do business with Iran, but also to impose sanctions on any foreign businesses that do business with Iran. The result: Foreign businesses thinking about doing business with Iran would have to decide whether it’s worth risking access to the world’s largest economy. The U.S. Treasury Department would provide businesses with 90-day and 180-day grace periods, depending on the type of sanctions, allowing them to wind down any current deals they have with Iran, before sanctions become formally enforced. But the actions are likely to have an effect immediately as firms won’t want to engage in new contracts with Iran that they’ll be sanctioned for in just a few months. Given how fragile the Iranian economy already is, these further measures could have a crippling effect on the regime, ratcheting up pressure and providing plenty of leverage for the Trump administration.
Also, critics of the Trump decision argue that Iranians will now be able to blame the U.S. for the deal blowing up and use that as a propaganda tool with its population. But Iran is always going to point fingers to the U.S. under any circumstances, and there’s growing evidence that Iranians are growing impatient with the regime.
In addition, those in favor of staying in the deal argue that by pulling out, Trump has alienated allies and signaled that the U.S. does not honor its commitments. On the first point, the question is, which allies? Certainly not Israel or Arab allies, who are rejoicing at Trump’s decision. As to the second point, if there’s any weakening of respect for U.S. commitments, the blame should lie with Obama, who decided to impose the Iran deal over vociferous objections of Congress rather than pushing for a deal that could gain legitimacy as a treaty by earning the support of two-thirds of the Senate as required by the Constitution.
Looked at another way, Trump’s decision does the actual opposite of showing the U.S. isn’t serious about its commitments — it communicates to the world that there’s a new sheriff in town who is going to follow through on what he says, unlike Obama (of the infamous red line in Syria). “Today’s action sends a critical message: The United States no longer makes empty threats,” Trump declared. This is an important signal to the rest of the world, and North Korea in particular, as nuclear negotiations heat up.
