The Trump administration has completed its comprehensive review of America’s Iran policy, according to an administration source, setting the stage for a possible recalibration of the nuclear deal with that country, which Donald Trump campaigned against in last year’s election.
In the short term, the president is unlikely to make a formal announcement of his new Iran policy, although Trump could touch on the subject during his address to the United Nations General Assembly next Tuesday. Trump is more likely to speak publicly about the new policy about a month from now, closer to the next deadline for the president to recertify Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Previously, Trump has begrudgingly recertified, which federal law requires him to do every 90 days, with the White House saying that it needed time to finish its policy review process.
Now that the review is complete, the president must decide whether to recertify again. Trump has been opposed to recertification on the merits but has so far been persuaded on prudential grounds to not decertify.
Last week, U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley made a public case for why the president would be justified in not recertifying Iran’s compliance.
“If the president chooses not to certify Iranian compliance, that does not mean the United States is withdrawing from the JCPOA,” Haley said at the American Enterprise Institute on September 5. “If the president finds that he cannot certify Iranian compliance, it would be a message to Congress that the administration believes either that Iran is in violation of the deal, or that the lifting of sanctions against Iran is not appropriate and proportional to the regime’s behavior, or that the lifting of sanctions is not in the U.S. national security interest, or any combination of the three.”
The administration has been communicating with leaders on Capitol Hill about the possibility that Trump could choose not to recertify. Before the most recent recertification in July, a group of Republican senators urged the president to decertify, citing the Tehran regime’s “aggressive and destabilizing behavior.” Trump himself has said Iran is not living up to “the spirit of the deal” and Haley argued last week that Iran’s compliance is “not as straightforward as many people believe.”
The JCPOA and Iran’s compliance with it, the administration has insisted repeatedly, are only a small part of the United States’s Iran policy review.
Mark It Down—“I think that the president, as well as the majority of the country, knows that the single-payer system that the Democrats are proposing is a horrible idea.” –White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, September 13, 2017.
President Trump said Wednesday that the rich “will not be gaining at all” from a Republican tax reform plan.
“I think the wealthy will be pretty much where they are,” Trump said during a meeting with members of Congress from both parties. “If they have to go higher, they’ll go higher, frankly.”
The idea of raising income taxes for the rich, while it had been a momentary cause of Steve Bannon’s during his time in the White House, is something the administration was supposedly “beyond” months ago.
But the White House has now made it a goal to earn some Democratic support for its eventual tax reform proposal and Democratic leadership has made taxes on the wealthy the focal point of their tax reform rhetoric. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have pledged that they will not support “one penny” of tax cuts for America’s highest earners. President Trump dined at the White House with Schumer and Pelosi Wednesday night to discuss tax reform and immigration policy.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday disputed the notion that the president saw Schumer and Pelosi as allies on par with McConnell and Ryan, but said Trump was very happy to meet with them to discuss “getting things done.”
“Look, the president is a Republican, and certainly I think ideologically that’s a much cleaner matchup,” Sanders told reporters. “But again, if these people and these individuals, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, want to come together to push the president’s agenda and the agenda that clearly the American people want to see—or they wouldn’t have elected Donald Trump—then we’re certainly happy to have that conversation and move the ball forward.”
Mueller Watch—From the Wall Street Journal: “Flynn Promoted Nuclear-Plant Project While in White House.”
Mueller Watch II—From NBC News: “Mike Flynn’s Son Is Subject of Federal Russia Probe.”
Trump Tweet of the Day
With Irma and Harvey devastation, Tax Cuts and Tax Reform is needed more than ever before. Go Congress, go!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2017
West Coast Watch—The New Yorker’s Sheila Marikar reports from Los Angeles on how some anxious parents in Southern California are navigating “the maze of contemporary child care protocols.” Here’s a taste:
Should the United States adopt a policy of Korean unification? That’s what Dan Blumenthal argues in a piece at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
“Trump’s predecessors left him with the strategic options of long-term deterrence and containment or long-term moves to rid the peninsula of the Kim regime and unify the two Koreas. There are really no other options,” writes Blumenthal. “All manner of “deals” have been attempted since 1993. The Kim family has been bribed, cajoled, and threatened. We have all the information we need about Kim’s intentions: Kim will never give up the nuclear weapons his family has relentlessly sought for decades.”
The president will travel to Florida Thursday to survey the damage from Hurricane Irma.
Song of the Day—“Raspberry Beret” by Prince.
