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Trump’s antics over Iran have endangered us all. The stakes are now lethally high
In withdrawing from the nuclear deal, the US – not the vile Iranian regime – is the rogue state risking global security
S
uch is the carnival of the Trump presidency, it can be tempting – especially for those outside the US – to view it as spectacle, a long-running reality TV show that veers between The Apprentice and House of Cards. But every now and then comes a reminder that, for all the cartoonish absurdity of the central character, the Trump administration is all too real, that its actions matter and that the stakes are lethally high.
A fresh and urgent reminder of that has come today with Iran’s declarationthat it will no longer fully comply with the nuclear deal it reached with the US and Europe in 2015, by which Tehran agreed to a 15-year pause on its nuclear programme in return for the easing of economic sanctions. In a televised address this morning – exactly one year after Trump withdrew the United States from the deal – Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, announced a series of moves that would inch the country closer to acquiring the ability to produce nuclear weapons, moves that would only be averted if Europe defied Trump and allowed Iran once again to sell its oil and have access to the international banking system. For the most severe of these steps, Rouhani gave the Europeans 60 days to make up their minds: either resume trade or watch Tehran resume its nuclear efforts.
There’s no mystery why this has come about, even if cause and effect are separated by 12 months. On 8 May last year, Trump dismissed the advice of his own military and security chiefs and broke from what he called the “worst deal in history”. The likeliest explanation is that Trump disliked the deal not because it was ineffective – on the contrary, international inspectors were adamant that Iran was complying to the letter – but simply because it represented the single biggest foreign-policy achievement of his predecessor. Just as Trump has been determined to unravel Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms, so he has been bent on dismantling his international legacy. Laughable though it may seem, Trump’s envy and resentment of Obama and his reputation may well be the key driver of this major geopolitical shift.
The consequences have been direct. Fearing secondary sanctions imposed by the US – heavy US fines on any company that does business with Iran – European firms have pulled out of the country, choking an already ailing Iranian economy. That has led Iranians to demand their leaders hit back. The only surprise of today’s move is that it took so long, as Tehran waited a full year to respond to Trump – all the while continuing to obey the terms of the nuclear deal.
Make no mistake, none of this is to suggest Iran is some paragon. The opposite is true. Along with the Kremlin, the Tehran regime is a blood-soaked ally of Bashar al-Assad, shoring up his murderous rule in Syria. It is a prime funder of terror groups in the region. And its record in crushing domestic dissent is brutal and documented. (An Iranian man was hanged for the crime of having gay sex just a few months ago.)
The regime’s behaviour is abhorrent now and it was abhorrent when the nuclear deal was signed. That agreement did not make any false promises of making it better. All it pledged was to halt the country’s nuclear ambitions for the next decade and a half, to buy some time and open up the space for the kind of cooperation that might make change possible. Like it or not, Iran has kept its side of the bargain, which related solely to its nuclear conduct. By withdrawing from it without cause, it was Trump’s Washington, not Tehran, that behaved like a rogue state.
Now the Europeans face a painful dilemma. If they buckle to Trump, they will watch that limited but valuable 2015 agreement collapse. If they defy him, some of their biggest companies will face crippling fines. They have spent much of the last year trying to construct a mechanism to get around those US sanctions, without success. Perhaps now they will approach the task with more urgency, though it’s not as if European governments don’t have plenty on their plates. (This, incidentally, was an issue in which pre-Brexit Britain was centrally engaged: now, it seems, the country is too distracted and too diminished to have much diplomatic impact.)
Either way, what the Europeans and the rest of the world can no longer deny is that Trump’s antics – his resentments, his decisions based on impulse, rather than evidence, his constant gestures to the Fox News base – may play out like gripping TV drama. But they have consequences in the real world, and some of them are grave.
• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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My Comments :
"Trump’s antics over Iran have endangered us all. The stakes are now lethally high"
1. Well mr. Freedland, if we are allowed to speculate - as you clearly have done at this occasion in your column - about the real reason behind the decision of Trump, to revoke the (renowned by many nations) international treaty with Iran on (willingly temporarily limiting its) atomic development, I would simply put the question to you of WHO exactly will be likely to benefit mostly from this highly toxic decision.
2. The second leading question - which is directly connected and related to the first one - might be the one that is asking after the exact identity of the special interest groups within the USA, that might give us a clue to the answer on the first question.
3. Let us first and for all conclude that 21-first century Iran is a major player in the Middle Eastern geo-political powerpool and a player that has shown us - by its multiple involvement in a range of recent geo-political developments in the ME for example - that it might have the ambition of becoming the regional superpower.
4. Parallel to this question we might have to admit to the conclusion, that the position of regional superpower in the ME is tightly knitted to the question, of who might have the most lethal (especially atomic) weaponry within its possession.
5. So one might be tempted (allowed even) to speculate about those entities in that very same area - including the special interest groups in the USA, that for a century at least, have been highly effectively representing the position of that entity - that might be all too willing to provoke Iran into some sort of reaction, that might give those interest-groups in their turn, some sort of alibi, to finally bomb-bomb-bomb the atomic potential and the political / religious heart out of Shiite Iran.
6. To bomb the reli-political heart and atomic potential out of Iran after having first removed much of the Iranian economical heart already by way of (re-) imposing crippling economic sanctions of course.
7. The question of who might benefit from unleashing an all out (conventional) confrontation with Iran, is practically the same exercise as answering the question of who has been screaming for years now, to have Iranian influence in the region diminished once and for all.
8. Iran has been attacked in the (fifties (UK-USA) and the) eighties for that very same reason (i.e. to suppress by its rivals, the Iranian ambition of becoming the regional superpower) by the then USA ally / proxy Saddam Hussein, but Iran appeared to be too resilient at the time.
9. The main competitor in the ME - next to Iran and (Sunni) Saudi Arabia that is - that has been applying for the position of regional superpower, is by all means one of the most favoured nations in the ME to Freedland.
10. But when it is all that obvious, who might be the greatest / biggest benefactor from a geo-politically diminished Iran, why is not (the notorious zionist apologist) Freedland overtly mentioning this circumstance, and in stead trying to let us believe - in full propaganda mode - that the pathological psyche of Trump might mainly be to blame for the decision, to abandon the international Iranian atom-treaty.
11. Moreover I would like to suggest more specifically to Freedland, that the very reason why the USA revoked the treaty a year ago, might partly have to do with the fact, that the influence of the USA in the world has increasingly been challenged by the rising superpower China, that has shown to the USA, that it is not to humbly bow over, to just any geo-political wishes of the steadily declining super-power USA.
12. So those forces within the USA that are closely connected to the main rival in the ME for becoming regional superpower in the ME, might have been calculating, that the longer the USA will wait with (ultimately militarily) attacking Iran, the more difficult it might be to entertain such an activity after the period of ten years, that the international atomic treaty with Iran has been providing for.
13. This might also be the very reason why the USA "national security adviser" Bolton a few days ago, (more or less) circumvented the USA secretary of Defense, by (announcing) ordering the Pentagon, to send another USA aircraft-carrier to the Middle East.
14. So we might be in the right position, to speculate on the base of rather well-educated arguments, that within a not too distant point in the future, a new major military conflict might be initiated by the USA - and/or by its proxy Saudi Arabia - against Iran.
15. After all, has this scenario not been altogether foretold in great detail by the former USA Defense secretary Wesley Clark, who informed the world in the first decade of the century about the USA Pentagon contingency plans for reshaping the power-balance in the Middle East, and has not that very "national security adviser" Bolton been central into developing and promoting those very plans at the time.
