Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced that the United States is pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, dismantling one of the most effective foreign-policy initiatives in 30 years, and kicking sand in the eyes of our closest allies.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani immediately announced that they would stick with the Deal for now, if most of the rest of Europe, China, Russia and the world supports it. But he also warned that Iran would restart its nuclear program if America’s actions really hurt the country or if the rest of the world did not support them. Which seems likely considering America’s economic clout and threats with our allies.
Saudi Arabia has already said that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, then Saudi Arabia will as well. The Kingdom is looking to acquire nuclear technology for a civilian nuclear power program and really wants to enrich uranium.
The bizarre thing is Iran is actually meeting the terms of the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), hammered out in Switzerland by the United States-led P5+1 Group in 2015. According to the United Nations’ nuclear watch dog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran shipped nearly its entire fissionable stockpile to Russia last year, over 12 tons of enriched uranium that could have been used to make uranium atomic bombs.
Iran then mothballed thousands of centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium for this type of atomic weapon. Iran also removed the core of its heavy water reactor at Arak, and filled it with concrete. That reactor could have produced plutonium for the other type of atomic bomb, one that is more easily mounted on missiles, like North Korea has done.
This Deal was only ever about nukes, not anything else. Not terrorism, not religion, not Israel, not ISIS, not Syria, not Yemen, although it should have helped Israel by removing what might be the most serious threat to Israel’s survival – a single nuke dropped on a very small country.
America violating this Deal has made the Iranian hardliners quite happy. It’s just what they warned their people that America would do. The Nuclear Deal was a major factor in the last two Iranian elections giving the Iranian moderates real power and standing against the Theocrats. The Deal illustrated how an Iran that was engaged with the world could help the country’s global economic and political standing.
The Deal was seen by the West as an important step in the democratization of Iran.
Trump’s announcement is just the latest blow against global democracy, which has been taking it on the chin for about 20 years. From China’s Xi Jinping becoming President-For-Life to Erdogan’s new Dictatorship for Turkey to Putin’s active war on global democracies, 71 countries have suffered a net decline in civil and political liberties, according to a recent Freedom House report. Without the United States to actively support democracy, the strongmen seem to be having their way.
Trump harangued the nuclear deal from the Diplomatic Room of the White House, calling it ‘horrible, one-sided and disastrous,’ without seeming to understand what was in it. Administration officials said the Iran sanctions suspended under the agreement will immediately snap back on, meaning any new contracts and financial deals with the country are banned.
Businesses and banks have up to 180 days to cut existing ties with Iran. The United States will not only sanction any nation that helps Tehran pursue nuclear weapons, but will also punish companies and banks that continue to do other business with the country, even U.S. companies.
The most important author of the Iran Nuclear Deal, former Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz, now CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, summed up Trump’s decision to violate the Deal this way:
‘President Trump’s decision today to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal is a major strategic mistake that not only damages the United States’ ability to prevent Iran from acquiring the material for a nuclear weapon, but also impairs our ability to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons, to work with allies and partners on issues of global concern and to protect our interests in the Middle East for years, if not decades, to come.’
‘The Iran nuclear deal rolled back Iran’s nuclear program and imposed uniquely stringent monitoring and verification measures—the most important elements of which were permanent—to prevent the country from ever developing a bomb. The United States is now in violation of the terms of the deal without offering a credible alternative.’
Moniz went further, adding, ‘It’s hard to predict what will unfold from here, but the President has driven a deep wedge between the United States and our allies in Europe and has withdrawn from the process that would allow a comprehensive investigation of the Iran archives recently revealed by Israel.’
Trump referred to that revelation - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent announcement of new evidence that Iran maintained a secret plan to build nuclear weapons. ‘We have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie’, Mr. Trump said.
But we already knew this. Iran’s cheating was before this new Iran Nuclear Deal and its heavy dose of monitoring and verification. It was impossible to monitor Iran from the outside prior to this Deal. It’s how Iran could cheat in the past and it’s why this deal was so good. And why killing it is so foolish.
It’s also why all of our allies except Israel tried to get Trump to keep it. And it’s why there won’t be another deal as good. This action just makes us look like the bad guys.
Pulling out of this deal has unintended consequences that go far beyond Iran. America now has little credibility when it comes to deals of any sort with any country. Upcoming nuclear talks with North Korea will certainly suffer. Kim Jong Un will ask for a lot more from us than he might have just to show we’ll honor any deal with him.
On the other hand, America’s oil industry might profit a bit. Chris Helman points out that reintroducing sanctions against Iran could remove up to a million barrels of Iranian oil a day from the global market, about the same as the increase in Iranian exports since the Deal took hold. American and Saudi oil are ready to fill that gap.
Two-thirds of Americans feel that Trump will get us into another major war, and half of Americans think he will use nukes when he gets the chance. Neither of these is good for America. Most people forget that the Iraq war that toppled Hussein’s Baathist government took out Iran’s natural enemy allowing Iran to ramp up their nuclear program, and made the defeated Baathists morph into ISIS.
The alternatives to diplomacy generally are bad. When they involved nuclear weapons, the effects could be truly disturbing.
