Trump and the Republicans have no clue on Iran.
By Steve Sheffey
It was obvious when we entered into the JCPOA that there was no better, realistic alternative to the Iran Deal. Trump withdrew from the Iran Deal with no strategy and no Plan B. Iran is violating the deal because Trump removed Iran’s incentive to comply by imposing sanctions prohibited by the deal while Iran was fully compliant. Now Trump is thinking about extending Iran a $15 billion bailout to entice Iran back into compliance. Trump isn’t playing three-dimensional chess. He doesn’t even know how to move the pieces.
The best proof that the Iran Deal was a good deal is that Prime Minister Netanyahu and others no longer warn us that immediate action is needed to stop Iran from breaking out in weeks or months. The Iran Deal took the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran off the table for the foreseeable future, and Trump walked away to fulfill an irresponsible campaign promise.
Before Iran received sanctions relief under the deal, Iran removed two-thirds of its centrifuges, including the disconnection of every single nuclear enrichment centrifuge at the Fordow facility. Iran reduced its stockpile of up to five percent enriched uranium from over 12,000 kilograms, enough for numerous nuclear bombs, down to under 300 kilograms, far less than the amount needed for even one nuclear bomb — a reduction of 98 percent. Iran removed the core of the Arak reactor and filled it with cement. Iran was forced to redesign that facility to ensure it cannot be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. All of Iran’s pathways to nuclear weapons were blocked, and to ensure that remained the case, we had 24/7 access to all known sites, including the right to inspect any site within 24 days under the most intrusive inspections regime any country has ever agreed to. Many important restrictions imposed on Iran by the Iran Deal lasted beyond 15 years and some, including a ban on nuclear weapons, were permanent.
In return, we gave Iran access to its own money. It was not a payment from the U.S., and the amount of sanctions relief came to about $50 billion (the $1.7 billion additional payment we sometimes hear about was to settle unrelated litigation with Iran, and that payment saved U.S. taxpayers money). Only someone as unskilled at deal making as Donald Trump would think that giving Iran access to its own money in return for Iran blocking all of its paths to a nuclear weapon was a bad deal.
The purpose of the Iran Deal was not to stop all of Iran’s nefarious activities, but to remove the potentially existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, thus making Iran’s other activities easier to counter. Iran continues to fund bad actors in the region, but to the extent Trump’s new sanctions decreased Iran’s funding of its proxies, those groups obtained alternative funding. Now Trump wants to extend Iran a line of credit.
Trump’s malfeasance extends beyond Iran. Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) notes that “on Syria, he threatened — via tweet — to withdraw all U.S. troops, leaving a land bridge for Iran and its proxies from Tehran to the Mediterranean. On North Korea, he attempted to entice a brutal dictator, Kim Jong Un, into a deal and got nothing in return besides ongoing ballistic nuclear tests. On Russia, President Trump refused to take any action to defend against its ongoing interference in our democracy and instead has aligned himself with President Putin.”
The departure of National Security Advisor John Bolton is a welcome development for those of who favor diplomacy over war, but his departure does not absolve Trump for appointing such a dangerous person in the first place, and the unprecedented turnover of key positions and vacancies within the Trump administration signals to the world that Trump is not prepared to lead, that he has no coherent foreign policy, and that his administration is unstable and poorly run — all of which are accurate assessments, and none of which bodes well for the safety and security of the United States and Israel.
Steve Sheffey is Strategy and Policy Adviser to the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) and the publisher of the weekly Chicagoland Pro-Israel Political Update. The views expressed here are his own.
