IRANIAN legislators shouted “Death to America” as they voted through a half billion-dollar increase in the country’s defense budget more than half of which will go to a new missile program. The excuse for this latest increase in Tehran’s aggression was the partial re-imposition of US-led sanctions following a provocative January missile test.
President Donald Trump always said Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran was a nonsense but has so far failed to tear up the agreement as he promised when on the campaign stomp. The glaring weakness of the Geneva settlement was that it only bound Iran to stop development on nuclear weaponry for 15 years. Obama’s one apparent foreign policy triumph in eight lackluster years therefore merely shuffled off the problem for another administration.
The sheer level of bad faith and diplomatic maneuvering worthy of the early nineteenth’s most slippery negotiator, the Austrian Prince Metternich, ought to have alerted Obama and his credulous Secretary of State John Kerry to the wool that was being pulled over their eyes. But so desperate was Obama for at east a single foreign policy achievement, against the advice of their regional friends and allies, including the Kingdom, they signed an effectively useless agreement.
As many predicted, Tehran is failing to deliver on its side of the bargain. Heavy water supplies are not being reduced as promised, enriched uranium is not yet being handed over to the Russians and it is unclear if the number of centrifuges, needed to make weapons grade material has been cut. International inspectors appear not be receiving the promised untrammeled access to Iranian nuclear program. Perhaps most significantly, there have been no layoffs among atomic scientists and technicians. Indeed there is evidence that recruitment of the best brains from university has actually been sharply stepped up. It is now clearer than ever that the Obama-led Iranian nuclear negotiations were a complete waste of time and the final tatty deal that emerged was not worth the paper it was written on.
So where are the shreds of paper that Trump promised? The deal has not yet been torn up. A month ago he signed off the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) by which every 90 days Washington accepts Iran is honoring its commitments. Trump aides briefed that this was a procedural issue — had he failed to do this, the initiative would have passed automatically to Congress and Trump wants to keep it in the Oval Office.
It may be that, at a time when Washington is in a growing confrontation with the North Korean regime, Trump and the Pentagon simply do not have enough time to ponder tougher action against the Iranians. This is a serious mistake. The solution to Iranian aggression is within his grasp — swingeing international sanctions should once again be re-imposed. This is not simply a face-off between Washington and Tehran. The entire Middle East in which America has considerable interests is threatened by Iranian duplicity and saber rattling. The only argument against is that since the Geneva-agreed lifting of sanctions which had crippled the Iranian economy, the regime in Tehran has been busily preparing for their re-imposition. Thus thanks to Obama’s gullibility, sanctions will take far longer to work, producing a highly dangerous extended period in which the unpredictable rule of the ayatollahs poses serious consequences for America’s regional allies.
