A destructive path on Iran
President Trump is about to make one of his most reckless moves yet on the global stage. He’s threatening to end a deal that has bottled up Iran’s nuclear program and break with his top advisers and party leaders who largely abide the agreement.
It’s Trump at his willful, irresponsible worst. He’s expected to void the 2-year-old pact that lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange with verified curbs on that country’s nuclear weapons work. The White House action won’t fully shred the arrangement but hands formal withdrawal to Congress to decide.
The president’s brimming with bluster on the topic, repeatedly denouncing the agreement as “one of the worst deals ever.” He suspects Iran is cheating, though repeated outside inspections show otherwise. He and other hawks want to punish Tehran for ballistic missile tests, fomenting trouble in Syria and elsewhere and posing a threat to Israel. Ripping up the deal would add to his dreams of destroying Obama administration milestones ranging from health coverage to climate change controls embodied in the Paris accords.
But dumping the deal would be a monumental foreign policy mistake, as both Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are suggesting. Reimposing sanctions sounds like a weighty rebuke, but it does nothing to stop a revival of work in Iran’s underground nuclear labs.
That prospect is why Republicans in Congress are nervous. Yes, they opposed the Obama-era deal, but, no, they don’t want to reopen the issue, save for a few hard-liners. That reluctance partly explains Trump’s demented attacks on Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who heads the Senate Foreign Relations panel where the Iran issue would land. Corker opposed the original deal in 2015 but hasn’t warmed to Trump’s thinking. His