Trump to Withdraw Support from Iran Nuclear Deal
President Trump is poised to withdraw support from the nuclear arms deal with Iran this Friday. He has been a long-standing critic of the deal, but many at home and abroad urge him to maintain the deal as Iran has been following the guidelines of the agreement. It is not likely that Trump would abandon the deal but rather use withdraw to renegotiate guidelines. Many people, including many Republicans, agree that totally scrapping the deal would leave the US in a weakened position in negotiations because Iran has been complying with the terms of the agreement. Both British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron have recommended that the deal be upheld.
Trump is expected to argue that the deal is not beneficial enough to merit the deal as it currently stands. He is also expected to attack the deal on the grounds that according to US law, Iran is actually not fulfilling their end of the agreement. However, both Congress and the International Atomic Energy Agency agree that Iran is in fact upholding their part of the deal.
Is it wise for Trump to argue against the opinion held be many at home and abroad? Will his tactics end up hurting or helping the US?
Trump is expected to argue that the deal is not beneficial enough to merit the deal as it currently stands. He is also expected to attack the deal on the grounds that according to US law, Iran is actually not fulfilling their end of the agreement. However, both Congress and the International Atomic Energy Agency agree that Iran is in fact upholding their part of the deal.
Is it wise for Trump to argue against the opinion held be many at home and abroad? Will his tactics end up hurting or helping the US?
4 comments:
This dude Trump got me all sorts of messed up. This deal isn't just about Iran, but rather the validity of international agreements themselves. If the world's most powerful country can just rip up arms control agreements whenever a new administration rolls into office it really just shows that these agreements aren't worth a damn. Sure, Obama had some bad policies, but was the Iran deal really one of them? Or does Trump simply want to undo anything Obama did just to feed his own ego? GOP tribalism will end up hurting the United States.
I doubt Trump ever took the time to take AP US History and AP US Government in high school. As the first American president to be elected without any prior military or political experience, Trump and his plan to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran raises the risk of nuclear war, and in the words of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his actions are "pushing us towards World War 3". Iran has demonstrated its propensity to act as a hostile, unyielding power in the past, particularly with the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Obama's nuclear deal with Iran took years of careful UN collaboration and negotiation, but now Trump wants to eliminate the deal without any critical thought whatsoever.
Under different circumstances, this idea might (and still a very tentative might) be plausible. With Trump? Not a chance. He's not really known to be a skilled speaker, diplomat or president (approval ratings have that strong negative correlation with time), and I'm willing to bet that the Iranian leadership knows this. They will probably see straight through Trump's intentions and the attempt mess up the carefully negotiated guidelines. The Iranians have been abiding by what the treaty had drawn out according to both Congress and a lot of the international community. Trump would like to argue that the Iranians are not abiding by American laws, but clearly the Iranians are Iranians and indeed not Americans (didn't take a genius to figure that out) so I doubt the Iranians are likely to agree to anything on that basis. Iran is a very nationalistic country in my opinion, especially given their past with the United States and their coup d'etat, and are highly unlikely to act favorably being told to do things under American law. I think Trump's attempt to "negotiate" will definitely do more harm than good.
Trump has called the Iran deal the "worst deal ever," but because of the way the deal is structured the president has to certify the deal every 90 days. Trump has already certified the deal twice during his presidency: in April and July. I remember specifically in April he was making people question whether he would actually certify it or not (because it was very close to the Iranian election and I was worried that a change in the status of the deal would affect the election), but he did sign off on it. So my main question is why is he bringing it up again? If he already acknowledged that Iran was holding up their part of the deal by singing off on it twice before, then I don't see why it had suddenly became an issue again.
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