Trump’s scary leap
Donald Trump has embarked on the riskiest foreign policy high-wire act of his presidency. There is no net; there are only millions of people standing below. This Editorial Board stood in staunch opposition to the misbegotten nuclear deal with Iran inked by the Obama administration and five other world powers in 2015.
Because it did nothing to address the radical Islamist regime’s sponsorship of terrorism through Hamas and Hezbollah.
Because it left Iran free to rush to breakout capacity to develop a bomb.
Because its “snap-back” provisions, to reimpose sanctions should Iran violate its terms, were patently absurd.
Because it enriched the mullahs rather than continuing to isolate and contain them.
Because, as strangely structured, it did an end run around the U.S. Senate, which has treaty approval authority.
Given these failings and others, it was not the agreement we would have wanted an American President to enter into.
But here we are, three years later, not in the world we might wish to have, but in the world that exists. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, says that Tehran is abiding by the deal’s terms.
That judgment is based upon a monitoring regime, albeit imperfect, that’s more extensive than any ever developed. Inspectors, on the ground every day since the deal was signed, confirm that the deal did, verifiably:
Eliminate 97% of Iran’s stockpiled enriched uranium. Remove two-thirds of the country’s centrifuges and put them under international monitoring. And disable a reactor that could have produced weapons-grade plutonium.
Though woefully incomplete, the deal is doing what it set out to do, without any credible claims of Iranian cheating.
The Trump administration’s intelligence agencies second that assessment. So does Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who last month called the verification provisions “actually pretty robust as far as our intrusive ability to get in” to potential nuclear sites. In October, Mattis said Iran was “fundamentally” in compliance with the deal.
Speaking from the White House Tuesday, Trump painted the Iranian regime as untrustworthy, violent and anti-American. All true.
He accurately detailed the deal’s weaknesses, and the fact that Iran lied about its previous nuclear weapons development efforts. Also true.
But to govern is to choose. And offering no constructive alternative whatsoever, what he did not do is give Americans cause to believe that walking away from a six-country arrangement to force Iran to strict terms constraining its nuclear program will make the region or the world safer.
As likely or likelier, it will encourage Iranian leaders to remove inspectors and move faster toward nuclear weapons than they otherwise would have. And empower Tehran’s hardliners. And spark a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile region. And isolate the U.S. from our European allies, who will for now try to enforce its terms. And send a signal to already nuclear North Korea that America is not a partner to be trusted.
This is a high-wire act, and we’re not at the circus.