Saber-rattling John Bolton and presidential adviser Steve Bannon are most assuredly not happy today with Pr*sident Trump’s decision to recertify Iran’s compliance with the provisions of the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In an op-ed published in The Hill on Sunday, Bolton, a hardcore neoconservative who hates the label, wrote that “withdrawing from the JCPOA as soon as possible should be the highest priority.”
Trump’s decision gobbled up a good deal of the Washington regime’s time Monday, with him arguing with his security advisers well into the evening that he didn’t want to go ahead with recertification and that he wanted them to produce a plan for a tougher stance against Iran than they had so far. They, in turn, said they needed more time. He gave it to them, reportedly begrudgingly, but indicated this approach is not one he will continue indefinitely.
The extra time, in fact, was what they said they needed in April when Trump agreed to recertification the first time.
All along, critics have claimed that Iran has been violating the spirit of the agreement, with Bolton and some others saying it’s also violating the actual wording. The agreement was the result of 20 months of intense negotiations among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Germany, and Iran. The other parties to the agreement, and the international inspectors, have made clear that they think Iran is in compliance.
Then-Secretary of State John Kerry was a frequent presence at the negotiating table in 2015, and the agreement was widely viewed as a signature achievement of the Obama administration. That, of course, has made it a target of foes who hate everything he ever did during his eight years as president.
That recertification move went forward despite Trump’s off-repeated campaign stance calling the nuclear agreement “the worst deal ever,” one damaging to America’s national interests that should be renegotiated or deep-sixed. Under the law, the president must certify Iran’s compliance every 90 days. The next certification comes in October.
In the wake of recertification, the White House announced new, non-nuclear-related sanctions on Iran Tuesday morning:
The U.S. government said it was targeting 18 entities and people for supporting what is said was "illicit Iranian actors or transnational criminal activity." [...]
It said the activities "undercut whatever 'positive contributions' to regional and international peace and security were intended to emerge" from the nuclear agreement.
The statement listed Iranian support for groups including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas movement, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The Trump regime and other critics have argued for new sanctions as well as an end to the nuclear agreement because of Iran’s ballistic missile tests, its alleged support for terrorism and Assad, imprisonment of several U.S. citizens, and its oppression of the Iranian people. Given the American government’s alignment with Saudi Arabia, arguably the leading oppressor among rich Middle East nations—to whom the United States sells tens of billions in advanced weaponry—this critique of Iran’s domestic politics epitomizes U.S. foreign policy hypocrisy, long predating the arrival of Trump in the White House.
Leaving the agreement, however, is problematic. Russia, China, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are not interested in returning to the bargaining table. Nor do they want to bring back the multilateral sanctions that are given credit for getting Iran to scale back its nuclear program—which Tehran says is peaceful but critics say is designed to add one more nation to the nine that now have nuclear weapons in their arsenals. If the United States left the agreement, it could only count—perhaps—on the U.K. joining it.
With Trump’s standing in Europe at a low point in part because of his announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, even getting the other members of the JCPOA to agree to press for a stricter interpretation of the provisions of the nuclear agreement would be problematic. Unilateral sanctions don’t work as well.
A way around this impasse is the hope among some officials that if the U.S. imposes enough new sanctions, it can provoke Iran to abandon the nuclear agreement, letting the U.S. off the hook for wrecking it.
Eli Lake, who usually argues from the neoconservative side of foreign policy, writes in a Tuesday Bloomberg column that Trump came close to killing the nuclear agreement, but finally gave in:
White House and other administration officials tell me the president nonetheless is serious about cracking down on Iran for its regional aggression, and is leaning closer to those of his advisers who are pushing him to pull out of the agreement that defines Obama’s foreign policy legacy.
In this sense, he is moving away from some of the most important members of his national security cabinet.
Those members include National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The internal recertification debate along with the new sanctions are strong hints that the United States is on the verge of further isolating itself from its allies and stomping into yet another war in the Middle East, something that Trump the candidate suggested at his rallies that he would never do. More troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as stepped-up action in Syria, count for yet another lie in his long, long list. Adding Iran as a target for U.S. military action would hardly be a surprise.