The pressure to scrap the JCPOA (aka Iran nuclear deal), legally or not, continues in an Ambassador Haley speech at the United Nations, as noted by J. Dana Stuster on Lawfare. This caught my eye:
The JCPOA was an international agreement only made possible by the participation of a coalition that included Russia and China; that Washington, Moscow, and Beijing could all agree to the terms is still an incredible diplomatic achievement by itself. But those international partners to the agreement got short shrift in Haley’s speech, only coming up in the question and answer portion. “This is about U.S. national security. This is not about European security. This is not about anyone else,” she said, which the New York Times reports left “several European diplomats in the audience fuming.” Haley claimed that the U.S. role is to ask tough questions of its partners. “No one [in Europe] wants to get out of the deal out of holding out hope that the Iranians will do the right thing,” she said. “I think we have to be honest enough to say, ‘But what if they’re not? What if they’re not doing the right thing?’” Haley then suggested that Iran would have a nuclear weapon and start a war as soon as the JCPOA’s limitations begin to expire. “What if we just gave them 10 years and all the money they wanted to do whatever they want to prepare for when that tenth year hits and they start nuclear war?” she asked.
That’s a bit of a breath-taker, isn’t it? Despite being part of a multi-party deal in which there are security guarantees and benefits for all parties, all Ambassador Haley will admit to seeing is the American national security interest – and then without even elucidating it.
And does the Trump Administration really think it has an end-game available if the JCPOA is scrapped without good reason? The United States has treated various allies, such as South Korea, like so much crap. Even if they could persuade Iran to return to the bargaining table, why should Iran or any of the other parties to the agreement think that the United States would stick to a future agreement? The behavior of the Trump Administration has bounced between vacillating and reprehensible; there is very little motivation to believe anything Trump says or or does is worthy of trust.
Some people call it karma. I just say what goes around comes around. They’d better hope that Iran is caught with its hand in the cookie jar with no hope of it being a setup. Hell, we’d all better hope that, given the Trump drive to scrap the JCPOA. Why?
Because without that excuse, we’ll be in a worse place than we were before. No agreement, so Iran can return to enriching plutonium with which to experiment with in pursuit of a bomb. We’ll call for sanctions and we’ll be ignored. Iran will thumb its nose at us.
And, in the second sub-basement, why? Because the GOP cannot stand the idea that Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement was the neutering of Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions. This pack of third-rater zealots would endanger the United States, in pursuit of repudiating an achievement that experts say is a good, safe, and effective agreement, as Stuster notes, because … why? Because a Democrat did it? Because Iran nationalized the oil industry way back when? Because some GOP idiot claims, for reasons unknown, that the agreement is actually dangerous despite the experts’ opinions, and all the rest of the GOP ambles along behind him without giving it any thought?
I honestly don’t know why the Trump Administration continues to neuter our own nation in the foreign relations area, but that really appears to be his goal.
