TRUMP GOES NUCLEAR
The fallout from undoing the Iran deal may upend the Mideast.
If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, we seem to be living through a full-blown, modern-day, ear-splitting orchestral re-enactment of that event.
Donald Trump is increasingly obsessing over his twin dramas of Stormy Daniels and Robert Mueller while blithely ignoring the grave global dangers of what is about to happen.
This means we are about to learn the real-world costs of Washington’s distracting noise and nonsense.
If Trump meets his self-imposed deadline next week by pulling the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear agreement, he runs the risk of lighting the Middle East on fire as well as sabotaging any prospect for a North Korean breakthrough.
This Nero business may have been fake news — after all, the fiddle didn’t exist in ancient Rome — but there is nothing fake about the three likely consequences of any collapse of the Iran nuclear deal.
One, Iran will slide even further into the hands of its hardliners.
Two, Israel and Iran will be pushed much closer to direct war.
And three, it will make it unimaginable that North Korea will want to do a deal with a country that so readily rips up its own commitments.
After several years of negotiations, the Iran nuclear agreement was struck in 2015 by Iran and five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the U.S., United Kingdom, France, China and Russia — as well as Germany. In exchange for the lifting of sanctions against Iran, the deal drastically limited the size of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program to ensure that Iran “never even comes close to possessing a nuclear weapon.”
At the urging of Israel, Saudi Arabia and conservative Republicans in the U.S., Trump has consistently called the deal, which was negotiated by predecessor Barack Obama, as “the worst ever” and has said the U.S. will “withdraw” from the deal by May 12 — the next deadline for waiving sanctions.
In response, America’s European allies, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, have acknowledged that the Iran deal is an overly limited agreement. But instead of entirely scrapping it “without a Plan B,” as Macron put it — which he said would be “insane” — Europe wants Trump to accept the deal and work with them to negotiate additional provisions.
Ironically, Iran has been in compliance with the agreement — according to international inspectors — while the U.S. itself hasn’t been. Under Trump in particular, the U.S. has blocked Iran from seeing the “economic benefits” from sanctions relief that were promised in the agreement.
In recent weeks, tensions in the Middle East have risen dramatically. Significantly, hardliners in Iran have applauded the efforts of Trump and Israel to kill the nuclear deal, because — if that happens — they will inevitably gain in power over the government of moderate president Hassan Rouhani.
Meanwhile, the hardliners in nucleararmed Israel — led by right-wing president Benjamin Netanyahu — appear to be preparing for the inevitability of direct military conflict with Iran.
In addition, what looms over the Iran debate is the nuclear impasse with North Korea. Although there is no certainty this will happen, Trump says he will meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in a high-stakes summit possibly in June.
The U.S. may actually be seeking from North Korea a deal roughly similar in nature to the one worked out with Iran, except for one key difference: Iran has never acquired nuclear weapons, whereas North Korea has dozens. So the risks are higher for North Korea.
In 1994, North Korea made a nuclear deal with the U.S. administration of President Bill Clinton, but it was broken shortly afterward when the newly elected Republican Congress took over.
Given Trump’s apparent determination to follow suit and scrap the current Iran agreement, why would the U.S. expect North Korea to go down this road once again?