I have listened with patience and diminishing hopefulness to the President's bluster and bombast—on many issues. The President has the gift of being able to put his finger on issues like “the wall”, the need for immigration control, bad trade deals, misguided regulations that are in need of action. He has also had the insight to encourage efforts to bring back jobs to America, efforts to help the working classes so long ignored by both parties.
But on this issue of Iran, where the situation in the ME has been stabilized and generally peaceful, the President has gone off the reservation. Why stir the pot there, when we have a real existential threat on the opposite side of the world,,,North Korea?y
His threat to "decertify" the Iran deal is simply STUPID. It creates exactly the wrong effect. It encourages nuclear proliferation. If no “rogue nation” could ever expect to “make a deal” with the USA that sticks THEIR OONLY OPTION FOR SURVIVAL IS A NUCLEAR ARSENAL!
The President’s threat of decertfying is first of all...it is only a showman's stunt. Decertification will not "undo the deal" as he naively and foolishly promised on the campaign stump. The actual effect of his decision to decertify (really not necessary on his part) is only to dump the decision-making-process of maintaining the agreement into the hands of the Congressional clowns. Who knows what that diverse and wild group will do with it? Perhaps they will pull out of the deal...as some of the war-mongers and neocons so fervently hope. Perhaps they will draw up other more aggressive sanctions on Iran. It is possible that they will simply agree that— like Obamacare....we are better with what we have —a stable agreement—than what the GOP and Trump are likely to give us.
In this action Trump is foolishly giving away his executive authority to the unpredictable mob in Congress. That does not seem like a smart move for our self professed "negotiator in chief". Would he pass on the right to compose the specifics of a contract to buy a Manhattan apartment building to the disgruntled tenants of the place? Not likely. But that is what he is doing here---putting a decision making process which the Constitution reserves for the chief executive—the one person at the head of the government who should be looking out for the well-being of the entire nation—putting that decision into the hands of a mob.
The Founders would be aghast.
Furthermore, the entire world, our own military and our intelligence services are all in agreement that Iran has complied with the tenets of this document. When we decertify and attempt to change the document we are in noncompliance. Is that how we want to be perceived?
Also this international deal was a group effort. The USA as well as the nations of Russia, Germany, France, Britain and China were all signatories with Iran. They all agreed to it. Do we want to betray them all, signifying that we are not a nation that can be trusted to comply with international order? Decertifying will certainly sully our reputation for the foreseeable future—with Trump as our President. Other international agreements in need of cooperation from the major powers—perhaps in regard to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal— will be—after this— very difficult to implement. This is indeed a very stupid short sighted movie.
Finally, the international sanctions which actually brought Iran to the table worked because we had the cooperation of these five nations as well as the wider community of nations. Any additional sanctions we impose on Iran will be only those we impose. We can be certain the we would no longer have the cooperation of Russia, or China...it is unlikely that Germany or France would join us as deal breakers.
Or is this bluster of Trump just a way of moving attention away form North Korea...a nation which now has nuclear weapons and is difficult or-impossible to control...to change the subject to Iran which is a still non nuclear and unarmed?
That would be really dangerous and dumb.
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