Donald the Menace blows Iran deal up
In Donald Trump, the United States has a reckless leader on an average day and a rogue leader on a bad one. Last Tuesday was a very bad day, as Trump made a theatrical production of keeping his threat to pull the U.S. out of the 2015 sevennation agreement that lifted economic sanctions against Iran in return for Tehran dismantling the core elements of its nuclear weapons program and accepting monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Trump’s rogue action is not a surprise. He’s been vowing to kill what he calls a “disastrous” Obama deal since the early days of his presidential campaign.
And no amount of pleading by allies who also signed the agreement (Britain, France and Germany), or repeated IAEA reporting that Iran has not violated the pact, nor even Defence Secretary James Mattis’s statement that Iran is in compliance, could shake Trump’s confidence in his own view and right to have his way, whatever the consequences.
The consequences are not good. Trump’s action will destabilize the Iranian government of President Hassan Rouhani, to the benefit of the implacably anti-Western Revolutionary Guard, which is far more likely to restart the nukes program and step up confrontation with Israel, using proxies in Syria and Lebanon. It drives another wedge between Trump and America’s alienated European allies, to the benefit of Russia and China, the other two signers of the Iran agreement.
The allies get Trump’s argument that the deal does not curb Iran’s development of missiles and support for terrorism and proxy wars. And they are ready to help the U.S. deal with Iran’s nonnuclear acts of aggression.
But they do believe — on the facts — that the 2015 deal is keeping Iran non-nuclear. They are vowing not to follow Trump in breaking the deal and reimposing sanctions. And they are going to be mightily angry — and resistant to bullying — if Trump moves to sanction them and their companies for not falling into line with his sanctions.
For the Middle East, the best outcome would be for Rouhani and the five other signatories to keep to the agreement, regardless of Trump, and not raise the nuclear stakes.
Russia and China are not going to take orders from Trump in any case. But the allies need to confront a reckless president who is damaging collective security and has no check from a poodle Republican Congress at home. Trump must learn the lesson of his rogue style of leadership.
Old allies are not going to follow. And he bosses too little of the world economy to get his way all on his own. U.S. influence melts away every day he fails to get that.