U.S. EXITS IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Will it mean end of the regime?
WASHINGTON • President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the landmark nuclear accord with Iran Tuesday, declaring he was making the world safer in restoring harsh sanctions.
The 2015 accord, which lifted major economic sanctions against Iran, was specifically aimed at preventing Tehran from gaining nuclear weapons.
But Trump said, “The Iran deal is defective at its core.”
“If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen. In just a short period of time, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons,” he said.
He said the United States “will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction.”
The leaders of Germany, France and Britain, cosigners of the agreement, expressed regret and said they would try to salvage the accord with Iran. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said he was sending his foreign minister to work with those remaining countries but warned there was only a short time to negotiate with them and his country could soon “start enriching uranium more than before.”
While it is clear that Trump’s move will have major geopolitical ramifications, just what those will be is unknown.
But several analysts predicting the move could lead to regime change in Iran.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Con Coughlin said it was Tehran’s aggression that had doomed the deal. Instead of a “constructive relationship” after signing the agreement they had pursued a goal of exporting the uncompromising principles of the Iranian revolution throughout the Muslim world.
“The Iranians intensified their hostility towards the West and its allies, to the extent that the very idea that Iran might be interested in maintaining a constructive dialogue now seems quite laughable,” he wrote.
“If Mr. Rouhani was genuinely interested in fostering better relations, he would not allow Iranian warships to harass the U.S. 5th Fleet as it fulfils its normal patrol duties around the Gulf region. He would not continue to support Houthi rebels in Yemen who have helped to create a humanitarian disaster there by seeking the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected government.
“And Mr. Rouhani would not tolerate the massive arms buildup that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has undertaken in Syria and Lebanon, where it has now stockpiled tens of thousands of missiles with the capability of hitting all of Israel’s major towns and cities.”
David Sanger, in The New York Times, said former president Barack Obama had hoped the deal would remove decades of hostility between Iran and the U.S. and allow them to pursue common projects.
“It didn’t turn out that way. While the deal succeeded in getting 97 per cent of Iran’s nuclear material out of the country, Iran’s conservatives and its military recoiled at the idea of co-operating on any projects with the West.
Months before it became clear that Trump had a decent shot at being elected, the Iranian military boosted its support for President Bashar Assad in Syria; it expanded its influence in Iraq and accelerated its support for terror groups. And it doubled down on deploying cyberattacks against targets in the West and in Saudi Arabia, embracing a weapon that was not covered by the nuclear accord.”
In The Washington Post, Geneive Abdo, a resident scholar at the Arabia Foundation in Washington, said social unrest could further destabilize the regime and hand more power to conservatives.
Iran would blame the U.S. for its faltering economy but, she wrote, “much of Iranian society no longer believes the claims of the regime. (During recent demonstrations, one chant from the protesters was: ‘Our enemy is here (at home). It is not America.’)”
“The regime is in serious trouble,” she wrote. “Rouhani has lost considerable power within the government and is weak with the political base that once supported him. The hardliners, too, have lost credibility, because of their corruption, their failure to deliver on economic promises and their military spending across the Middle East. The future could bring further polarization in society — something the regime fears deeply — and could realign political power temporarily in favour of the hardliners.”
Nasser Karimi, writing for The Associated Press, noted that the Iranian economy had not improved after the deal and matters would now worsen. “Many criticize Rouhani’s administration for failing to control rocketing prices for staples like meat, chicken and rice. Everything from taxi rides to haircuts are now more expensive. The Iranian rial has plummeted to 70,000 to the dollar in the black market, compared to an official rate of 42,000,” he wrote.
“Perhaps more concerning to Rouhani and his allies are the growing calls for a ‘military man’ to take over in Iran. While former soldiers and security force members have circled Iran’s politics, a military strongman has never emerged to run Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.”
Karimi quoted Ebrahim Fayyaz, a political scientist at Tehran’s conservative Imam Sadegh University, as saying, “What is happening in the world will happen in Iran, too. People desire dictatorship. People are tired of the current social order. There is no political power in the country. The continuation of the current situation will lead to the collapse and disintegration of the country.”