In These New Times

I don’t think Trump is about to scupper the Iran deal: the resistance to doing so is indeed “overwhelming”. Were he to do he would isolate the USA completely and cripple US diplomacy. The immediate consequence would be to rule out a diplomatic solution the the Korea crisis.  That would explain why, in what is now a familiar pattern, the military have been to the fore in appealing for reason. Thus

“on Wednesday afternoon, the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, General John Hyten, in a speech at the Hudson Institute, said, “The facts are that Iran is operating under the agreement that we signed up for under JCPOA… We have an agreement that our nation has signed and I believe that if the United States of America signs an agreement, it’s our job to live up to the terms of that agreement, it’s our job to enforce that.” “

Cato Institute

21st September, 2017

This has not been a good week for President Trump’s Iran policy. As the president has indicated, he plans in mid-October to decertify Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated and signed in 2015, which rolled back Iran’s nuclear program, placed severe restrictions on it for the foreseeable future, and imposed the world’s most intrusive inspections regime on what remained.

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