The Iran Deal is not so Clear-Cut

Numerous editorials have either condemned or saluted the deal. The President is clearly taking a chance that the Iranians will succumb to pressure by the invocation of additional sanctions against them.

Iran has been aspiring to hegemony in the Middle East since the 1979 revolution, its "death to America and to Israel" playing upon the minds of American intelligence officers as well as the Saudis, Israelis, Syrians, and all other antagonists who fear that the Middle East tinderbox will explode into another war.

Just last month Russian and American warplanes almost clashed over Syria.  The Russians are supporting Hezbollah against Israel; rockets and missiles abound in Syria, pointed against Israel.  But mainly the nefarious mischief of the Iranians is producing these untenable conditions.

Barack Obama and John Kerry negotiated a deal that omitted the considerations of Iranian duplicity in its promulgation of weapons to the Syrians, the Houthis in Yemen, and all those who are warring against the Sunni majorities in Saudi Arabia, the Jews in Israel and all those who do not believe in the religious fundamentalism of the Iranian clerics.  They expect that they will control Syria through their puppet--the murderous Bashar Al Assad.  Deal proponents argue that the Iran arrangement  is working because the IAEA, the Europeans, and the UN believe that Iran is complying with its obligations under the deal and that America pulling out is a grave mistake.  How are they complying?  That is a matter of great question.  Religious theocratic fundamentalists do not comply with anyone but their preconceived notions of Allah, heretics and infidels threatening their power.

Susan Rice, former National Security Adviser argues that Iran relinquished 97 % of its enriched uranium stockpile and dismantled 2/3 of centrifuges as well as its plutonium and that inspections have verified the same.  She also argues that the US unilateral withdrawal from the agreement demeans trust in the word of the United States, also ascribing Trump's decision to a matter of ego, by jettisoning the Obama agenda at every opportunity, as well as sending a signal to Kim Jong Un that the US "cannot be trusted."    What she neglects to say is that Kim will never trust us anyway and we will not trust him, because nations always follow their own interests.  Rice's naïveté is evident in her piece in yesterday's New York Times.  Also questionable is her premise that in entering the deal, the US never intended to address Iran's other malign expeditions.  Perhaps it should have.

Iran's economy is in a ditch, and President Trump believes that they will be pushed over the edge by additional sanctions.   The jury is out on that one.  We simply do not know how the European actors will handle the American sanctions or even secondary sanctions.  What is clear, however is that European business given a choice between the United States market and the Iranian market, are hardly challenged by such a choice.

I am a progressive democrat and an anti-Trumper.    I have believed that he has demeaned and been destructive of the office of the Presidency.   His animus for Obama is eroding, by a thousand cuts, health care for many Americans.  His immoral acolyte Scott Pruitt is decimating years of environmental protections.  Trump is a proven liar and narcissist.   He has pushed for a ruinous tax cut with possibly dire economic consequences exploding the deficit and fooling his base.

Whatever his motives may be: forestalling Mueller, dancing with porn stars, employing thuggish lawyers, threatening and bullying those below him, inability to think and read, this withdrawal from the Iran deal may be the right move, if perhaps for the wrong reasons.  But maybe not.

The funding of Iranian terrorism through the return of billions to enable them to assert further hegemony, promulgate proxy wars, and cooperate with malign forces, stuck in the President's primitive craw.  Moreover, as Bret Stephens of the New York Times argues, that under the deal Iran would have been able eventually to enrich as much uranium as they would wish, an insane dénouement.

Young Iranians are fed up with theocracy and intolerant clerics running their country.  This bold gambit by the United States may push them over the edge.  Already there have been violent episodes in the streets.  More may be coming and regime change might happen or at least threaten the existing status quo.  But maybe not.

At the same time, the risk of war has grown; Israel is already at war in Syria and the U.S. must brace itself for a time of turmoil including war; and upon turmoil Trump revels.