Donald Trump isn’t scheduled to make his announcement on the Iran nuclear deal until 2pm, but all the suspense is gone now that the New York Times is reporting that French President Emmanuel Marcon has been informed of the decision.
President Trump told President Emmanuel Macron of France on Tuesday morning that he plans to announce the withdrawal of the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, according to a person briefed on the conversation.
Mr. Trump’s decision unravels the signature foreign policy achievement of his predecessor, Barack Obama, isolating the United States among its allies and leaving it at even greater odds with its adversaries in dealing with the Iranians.
The United States is preparing to reinstate all sanctions it had waived as part of the nuclear accord — and impose additional economic penalties as well, the person said.
A second person familiar with negotiations to keep the 2015 accord in place said the talks collapsed over Mr. Trump’s insistence that sharp limits be kept on Iran’s nuclear fuel production after 2030. The deal currently lifts those limits.
If this reporting is correct, it means that President Trump has finally broken something of major consequence. Most of the things he’s done so far are either reversible or no different from what any Republican president would do. Blowing up the Iran deal is in a completely different category of malevolence.
Mr. Trump’s decision, while long anticipated and widely telegraphed, plunges America’s relations with European allies into deep uncertainty. They have committed to staying in the deal, raising the prospect of a diplomatic and economic clash as the United States reimposes stringent sanctions on Iran.
It also raises the prospect of increased tensions with Russia and China, which also are parties to the agreement
The decision fulfills one of Mr. Trump’s oft-repeated campaign promises, and came despite intense personal lobbying by European leaders and frantic attempts to craft fixes to the deal that would satisfy him.
The president’s own aides had persuaded him twice last year not to take this step.
The split in the Western alliance will be immediate:
Germany and France on Monday vowed to stand by the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers even if the United States pulls out, with the German Foreign Minister saying the world would be less safe without it….
…German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said it was clear that the agreement made the world securer and there was a risk of escalation were it to be cancelled.
“We don’t think there is any justifiable reason to pull out of this agreement and we continue to make the case for it to our American friends,” Maas said during a joint news conference with visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
“We’ll deal with the (U.S.) decision but like Jean-Yves said, we want to adhere to this agreement,” Mr. Maas added.
Mr. Le Drian said France, Britain and Germany would keep to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran irrespective of the United States’ decision later this week because it is the best way to avoid nuclear proliferation.
“We are determined to save this deal because this accord safeguards against nuclear proliferation and is the right way to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Le Drian said.
Needless to say, this kind of rift in the West is one of Vladimir Putin’s fondest goals and he must be positively beaming at the moment.
Beyond that, it represents the complete collapse of American leadership on the global stage. Based on nothing but fantasies and conspiracies, America has now blown up the the whole anti-proliferation mechanism of the international community. This is a mechanism we had the lead role in creating and maintaining, and also the most important role in enforcing.
Our Western partners will attempt to maintain what Trump has left in tatters, but this is more out of reflex than plausibility. Future deals will be impossible to construct without American participation, and our word is now mud.
It’s not possible to firmly define the scope of this catastrophe because we don’t know if it will lead to war, to nuclear war, to nuclear terrorism, or just to chaos and a new world with America sidelined as a pariah state in need of containment.
With luck, a new president can mitigate some of this damage but it looks like a classic case of Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall.
I hoped you’d weigh in on this issue, Martin. I count on your level-headed evaluation on events like this.
I can not bear to rehash the “if only” and “how did this happen?” lines we’ll hear in the aftermath. The Republicans wanted a leader without political experience, someone who would run the country like a business. We knew that the concept couldn’t work and now there’s proof. Trump has achieved another campaign promise and personal goal: undo whatever Obama and the Democrats had achieved.
We cannot reduce everything to dollars and cents. We cannot always live by the bottom line. International agreements are not to be taken lightly or treated like business deals; Trump has never understood diplomacy and the delicacy of dealing with other cultures, and now he’s driven a stake into the heart of a vital deal that he cannot replace. I’m worried about the price to be paid.
I’m voting in our local primary today, one more step in reasserting my voice as a Democrat and more than that, as a thinking human being. It’s a long way until the Midterms and longer still to 2020, but I can’t give up. We can’t give up.
They DID get someone who could “someone who would run the country like a business.”
Of course, the business they had in mind was “The Bamboo Lounge”
It’s nothing less than the wholesale looting of the country for the benefit of the very very rich.
The US abrogating the Iran deal is likely to send oil prices skyward, among other things.
Now who does that benefit? Russia and Saudi Arabia for two. Gee who is it that have assiduously cultivated Trump. Who is it that meddled in our elections?
Sounds about right — quite reasonable and rational, in fact — for TrumpAmerica.
The West gets divided, oil prices rise, and Iran moves more into the Russian sphere of influence. And if oil prices rise sufficiently, America goes into recession
It is a total victory for Putin, if it happens.
It makes 30 million voters hard in their pants, and isn’t that the important thing?
MAGA!
Davis, you are the king (or queen) of the “zinger.” I don’t know how literally you intended this, but I think you’re correct on many levels.
For at least a generation, the language of the reactionary right has suggested that negotiation, compromise, and peacemaking are somehow “unmanly.” Their derogatory references indicate that, somehow, they feel international agreements emasculate every red-blooded American male.
So, yeah, this is red meat for the viagra-popping Trump voters. Make America Hard Again, etc.
I’m not equipped to go too deeply into this line of analysis. But, somehow, true liberals and progressives need to find new spokesmen (and I mean spokesMEN) and a clear message that demonstrates that compassion, compromise, and diplomacy are all character traits of Real Men.
Perhaps none of this will bring more male voters back to the Democrats, but I think there’s room for discussion and exploration of the subject.
Didn’t take long for the US to go from a city on a hill to a shande far di goyim, did it?
For at least a generation, the language of the reactionary right has suggested that negotiation, compromise, and peacemaking are somehow “unmanly.”
Been that way since forever. And if things proceed apace, there will be a reactionary left with similar feelings. And then, well … Just ask Georges Danton how that all works out.
This is probably one of the things Trump got paid to do by Putin.
Does anybody know the Iranian reaction? Did they send any signals that they might stick to the treaty? Is it even possible? Then the US would sanction the European firms dealing with Iran? A cold war between Europe and the US?
I can’t say I am anything less than deeply distressed.
Previously they have said they staying with it.
That makes senses at this time. Nations should make decisions based on what most benefits themselves.
Later, when Trump applies pressure on our allies to get in line? Who knows.
There is also this.
Iran is not in a particularly weak position, and if it can keep Europe satisfied and unwilling to join a strenuous sanction program, and/or military action, they can probably ride it out. The only way to keep Europe on board is to stay in the agreement.
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. . . Iran and the other 5(?) parties continue abiding by the agreement, leaving
as booman so aptly put it in his post above.
Pretty sick making Iran look (by comparison) like the measured, rational, responsible party abiding by international treaties/agreements, as expected of any normal nation-state.
Iran has never been shown to have violated any treaties, including the NPT, and those `agreements’ you speak of were created after the fact. Research and enrichment are not prohibited by the NPT, and the ability the enrich uranium is accepted by the treaty as a permissible by every nation on earth.
The sanctions imposed on Iran were NEVER `rational’, and were created for the simple purpose of allowing a bunch of bitter old white men to get revenge on Iran for the unforgivable sin of taking hostages in the 80’s, and over throwing a dictator imposed on them….by the very country insisting on sanctions thirty years later.
`Revenge is a dish best served cold’.
.
It wasn’t just revenge, you know.
They also had to be punished for worshiping idols and false gods.
And not being free enough with the krugerrands.
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. . . is the descriptor that comes to mind.
The only “agreement” I spoke of is the one Trump just abrogated. Are you claiming Iran is not a party to it?
Or that Iran DOESN’T
Or that it’s sick that Trump’s making them look that way by comparison to TrumpAmerica, which is miserably failing in those regards?
Sheesh.
Look, the people and workers of Iran are protesting against the regime in areas that are normally fully supportive, demanding their asshole leaders to GTFO Syria…so we have to show them how much we care by starving them and causing their country to collapse, leaving them with no one but the regime we want to go to war with.
Ok, it doesn’t make any sense even when you type it out. But we can at least agree that Ben Rhodes and John Kerry are crying, and that’s what is important.
I’m listening to this bullshit and it sounds so much like the Bush rush to war with half assed intelligence. Why this fucking rush to screw up the world?
John Bolton wants war with Iran
John Bolton wants the intelligence community on board with that war.
John Bolton has a history of using `cooked intelligence’ to further his goals.
And yet John Bolton is perfectly satisfied with Trumps choice of CIA director, someone who publicly proclaims loyalty to the CIA, and its analytical integrity.
Hmmmm.
.
I read this as the first step to war. Maybe not but the hotheads are controlling the narrative.
Trump thinks the Israelis have definitive proof the Iranians were cheating. Never mind vetting that proof. He done got it all figured out when he said this deal “will never”bring peace. Bolton and the war cheerleaders are have no an orgasm.
It’s beginning to look like the main war troika will be Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US.
Not the deepest thinkers leading those countries.
.
Netanyahu is perfectly willing to prosecute his war with Iran to the last American life…
For a change of pace, make Bibi fight his won war.
I wonder how Kim will take this news?
The odds on actual NK denuclearization just went from zero to some arbitrary negative number.
Maybe what this will lead to is the sidelining of the US. What needs does Iran have that can be satisfied only by the US? Sofware? Pretty easy to get illegally or in extremis to copy. The Internet? I doubt the US could uinlaterally block this anymore. If the EU and China and pretty much everyone else wants to abide by the accord, then, if Iran does as well, it could be the consequence is that big mouth shot the US’s wad and no one ultimately cared.
. . . outcome under current circumstances (i.e., insane, warmongering GOP control of U.S. military might), even as it comprises a large decline in U.S. influence and prestige.
Trump/GOP exerting that power to any purpose that wasn’t immensely harmful and/or morally reprehensible is pretty much inconceivable at this point. That they want to do something is pretty much a prima facie case that it’s a bad idea — no independent corroborating evidence or analysis required.
[Yeah, yeah, I know, cue some idiotic both-siderist/whataboutist to argue against what I didn’t say.]
The Iran deal has always been noted as a complex treaty and that automatically meant Trump wouldn’t see it as anything else but a tool to wield power for him. It wasn’t simply a campaign promise, it’s become a last stand of sorts for him to override the onslaught of Mueller’s team.
The trouble with power plays is that they have expiration dates as opposed to decisions based on wisdom and strategies.
Can’t help but wonder if Trump wouldn’t have chosen to back off a flat out exit if he hadn’t felt the pressure of Mueller or Avenatti breathing down his neck.
That’s why this is such a tell on his decision making, why he just demonstrated that his promises aren’t worth dirt. He’ll always choose a military parade.
About the “any republican president” part, attacking Iran was a much wanted goal under the last republican president, and that gang didn’t care about causing rifts with Europe either.
Europe needs to come to terms with the actual situation in which it now finds itself. The successful incretinization of the American White electorate has ended all possibility of sane American global leadership going forward. Indeed, the appellation “Madman” now fully applies to the democratically illegitimate holder of the American presidency, and his von Boltontrop in the NSC. Mad dog Mattis either approved of this insanity or was humiliatingly defeated in his first skirmish with von Boltontrop.
If Europeans choose to defer to the American Madman and his puppet-master Netanyahoo, they will have a new shooting war on their hands, bigly. Of course, they will likely have one should they continue the deal and work to soften the Boltonian sanctions (if not provide for their effective nullification, which Iran can legitimately demand). So it’s an American/Israeli war with Iran either way; that is the obvious path Der Trumper has now embarked on, and democratic European leaders and peoples will have to decide on which side to fight.
So Iran can pretty much name its price as it sits down with the other signatories, while the American Madman fumes, and Iranian rightwingers have been handed a gift that will keep on giving for decades. As for FailedNation, Inc., its incompetent CEO has filed the long-anticipated articles of bankruptcy. Look for some additional comedic pratfalls in Paralyzed Congress as well.
Heckuva Job, White America!
I wish I could believe you were overstating the case.