Must I address every Trump atrocity? (Actually I don’t, it’s impossible; I haven’t discussed the NFL nonsense.) But I feel a civic duty to call out truly bad stuff.
Even The Great Liar can’t say Iran actually violated the nuclear deal, to justify trashing it. Instead his fig leaf is to claim it somehow harms U.S. security interests. But that too is a great lie. What does harm our security interests is trashing the deal.
Iran is a bad actor in many ways, yes. But the deal at issue is limited to just the nuclear program. Will undoing it make Iran a better global citizen? Certainly not; to the contrary, it will remove any leverage we have over Iran, and thus any constraints on its behavior. Is that in our national security interest?
It’s argued the deal was a bad one because it won’t stop Iran’s nuclear program. But the whole point was instead to slow the program, subject it to international inspection, and buy time. That was the best we could achieve; Iran would never agree to give up its nuclear ambitions entirely. Those who criticize the deal offer no plausible path to a better one. While undoing the deal will free Iran to go full speed ahead to a bomb, with no international inspections or other restraints. Is that in our national security interest?
But it gets worse. The Iran deal represented the kind of American leadership Trump refuses to understand. We led the international coalition of nations joining in this effort. Those others strongly support the deal. What will they think if we wreck it, reneging on the deal we had committed to? Will they look to us for leadership in the future? Will anyone make any deals with a nation that can’t be trusted to fulfill them? Or was that not covered in The Art of the Deal?
Remember the term “rogue nation?” I used to bristle when anti-Americans turned it against us. It was untrue before; but now, alas, it is true.
Abdicating America’s global leadership role leaves a void that Russia and China are all too eager to fill.
Is that in our national security interest?
Trump’s action quite simply makes no sense (except, of course, pandering to his know-nothing base). However, in typical Trump fashion, there’s less here than meets the eye — yet another in the unending saga of Trump flim-flams. It doesn’t actually tear up the Iran deal. Instead it bucks the issue over to Congress, to restore sanctions. But even if Congress does nothing, that won’t repair the grave damage to America’s international credibility and standing.
Advertisements