Trump Announces Withdrawal from Iran Agreement

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by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Via the Denver Post, Sen. Cory Gardner defends Trump’s pullout from the Iran nuclear weapons deal while most of the world expresses outrage:

“I think the Iran deal was flawed from the beginning,” said Gardner in a brief interview just off from the Senate floor. “The fact is the Iran deal guaranteed a nuclear future for Iran — a patient pathway to a nuclear bomb.”

But Sen. Michael Bennet says the decision makes a nuclear Iran more likely, not less:

“Since taking office, President Trump has produced no strategy to counter Iran’s malevolent activities across the Middle East, all of which would be more dangerous if backed by a nuclear weapon,” Bennet said. “U.S. intelligence has assessed Iran is in compliance with the (agreement), and the president has offered no alternative path forward to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities.”

Who’s right? Hopefully we don’t have to find out the hard way.

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Then-candidate Donald Trump speaking at a Capitol Hill rally in 2015

President Trump has announced his decision to withdraw from a multi-national agreement with Iran over the country’s ongoing flirtation with nuclear weapons. From the Washington Post:

The United States “will withdraw” from the international nuclear deal with Iran and will reinstate economic sanctions against Tehran, President Trump announced Tuesday.

Trump’s decision, announced at the White House, follows the failure of last-ditch efforts by Britain, France and Germany to convince him that his concerns about “flaws” in the accord could be addressed without violating its terms or ending it altogether…

…The action makes good on Trump’s campaign pledge to undo an accord negotiated under his predecessor, President Barack Obama. Obama considered the agreement his signature foreign policy accomplishment, calling it the best way to head off the near-term threat of a nuclear armed Iran and a potential opening toward better relations with Tehran after more than three decades of enmity.

David E. Sanger of the New York Times attempts to explain the logic behind Trump’s decision:

For President Trump and two of the allies he values most — Israel and Saudi Arabia — the problem of the Iranian nuclear accord was not, primarily, about nuclear weapons. It was that the deal legitimized and normalized the clerical Iranian government, reopening it to the world economy with oil revenue that financed its adventures in Syria and Iraq, and support of terror groups…

…Mr. Trump and his Middle East allies are betting they can cut Iran’s economic lifeline and thus “break the regime” by dismantling the deal, as one senior European official described the effort. In theory, America’s withdrawal could free Iran to produce as much nuclear material as it wants — what it was doing five years ago, when the world feared it was headed toward a bomb.

But Mr. Trump’s team dismisses that risk: Tehran doesn’t have the economic strength to confront the United States, Israel and the Saudis. And Iran knows that any move toward “breakout” to produce a weapon would only provide Israel and the United States with a rationale for taking military action.

It is a brutally realpolitik approach that America’s allies in Europe have warned is a historic mistake, one that could lead to confrontation, and perhaps to war.

We’ll likely have more on this story as it progresses.

15 thoughts on “Trump Announces Withdrawal from Iran Agreement”

ParkHill says:

May 8, 2018 at 1:28 pm

As always, we have to ask: "Is this good for Russia?"

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1. Diogenesdemar says:
  
  May 8, 2018 at 2:41 pm
  
  America acting like an isolated, unreliable, untrustworthy putz always has been.
  
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2. slavdude says:
  
  May 9, 2018 at 8:30 am
  
  No.
  
  They helped negotiate the Iran deal.
  
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RepealAndReplace says:

May 8, 2018 at 2:05 pm

This is how the pull out is viewed in the White House today:

We are being made great.

Russia is being made great.

Iran is not being made great.

Israel is being made safe.

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1. Phoenix Rising says:
  
  May 8, 2018 at 2:15 pm
  
  You forgot – and another Obama accomplishment is undone.
  
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2. Gilpin Guy says:
  
  May 8, 2018 at 4:30 pm
  
  A lot of people wish Trump would have pulled out sooner.
  
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  1. MichaelBowman says:
    
    May 8, 2018 at 6:15 pm
    
    Are you talking about Fred Trump? Fall of 1945?
    
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    1. Gilpin Guy says:
      
      May 8, 2018 at 6:54 pm
      
      Many, many, many, many, many, many people.
      
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Diogenesdemar says:

May 8, 2018 at 2:32 pm

The clerical coalition government of Israel, and the clerical coalition government in Saudi Arabia, speak with credibility and authority on why every effort to legitimize and normalize another clerical government must always be opposed . . .

. . . even at the price of regional and world destabilization . . .

. . . ~~Jesus Moses Mohammed~~ someone said so, maybe, we ~~think~~ believe.

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1. Gilpin Guy says:
  
  May 8, 2018 at 4:30 pm
  
  You forgot the clerical coalition government of Amerika.
  
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Gilpin Guy says:

May 8, 2018 at 6:58 pm

Maybe we are overthinking his reasons for doing this besides the anti-Obama angle.

What's the first thing that is going to happen as a result of his actions?

Gas prices go up. Who benefits from higher gas prices?

What's the second thing that is going to happen?

We'll need to spend more money on defense of course to protect ourself’s from the surge in anti-American violence.

When you live under a kleptocratic government, you have to look at events through the prism of who gets the money.

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1. Davie says:
  
  May 8, 2018 at 7:57 pm
  
  And if Trump has to start a war to distract from the Stormy scandal or the Mueller investigations, so be it.
  
  Up next news cycle, a world trade war.
  
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2. Diogenesdemar says:
  
  May 8, 2018 at 9:34 pm
  
  I like the don’t overthink this, after all this is Yammybonkers Propecia Foxhead we’re talking about . . .
  
  . . . he’s gonna change his mind twice, blame it on somebody else — probably the lyin’ media for misreporting, delay “implementation” four times, and then create five new chaoses to deal with that leaves this mess on the table unfinalized . . .
  
  . . . if the world would just learn to ignore this dumb fuck, and “yeah, yeah whatever” him, and just move along about its business, the entire planet would be breathing much easier.
  
  Sure America is gonna’ find itself increasingly more and more isolated, and less and less influential, but who we anyway besides the knuckleheads that allowed this asshole to get elected? Shit happens. Elections have consequences. Hey, we had a good run, but we fucked up. No world power lasts as a world power forever.
  
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  1. Voyageur says:
    
    May 8, 2018 at 9:53 pm
    
    Well, Rome gave it a pretty good shot.
    
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    1. Diogenesdemar says:
      
      May 8, 2018 at 9:59 pm
      
      Yep, it was good . . .
      . . . mostly for those in that small minority of elites.
      
      And, we’ve had our Nero Bush, and now the Cantaloupe Caligula . . .
      
      . . . we be “them whats don’t learn from history . . .”
      
      (No need to nitpick the order.)
      
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