Donald Trump’s long-expected announcement that he would not certify the nuclear agreement with Iran should, in keeping with his aggressive posturing on the issue, have become the catalyst for what he called the “worst deal ever negotiated” being dismantled.
The consequences of that happening would have been that trust in international agreements would have evaporated. Iran would be forced back into isolation, with its reformist government replaced by hardliners going full tilt in developing a nuclear arsenal. North Korea would have sped up its own nuclear and missile programmes, holding that there was no point in negotiations because the US could always renege in the future. Proliferation would continue to spread with Tehran’s neighbours in the Middle East, Turkey and possibly Egypt going down the same nuclear path and Saudi Arabia, which has supposedly already bought the bomb from Pakistan, going on a shopping spree for more.
Yet as things stand now, such a dire scenario can perhaps be avoided. It is true that Mr Trump’s refusal to certify Iranian compliance, based on spurious excuses, has put great strain on the deal and the accusations he made against Iran will further ratchet up tension. But there is a good chance that the agreement will survive and the US President’s actions now may, ironically, be a stabilising factor in the future.
Mr Trump revealed on Friday that he will not be scrapping the agreement. Instead, he will ask Congress to examine whether Iran is abiding by it. Nor has he demanded that Congress re-impose sanctions. He has, instead, asked that it bring in legislation which will trigger them if Tehran is found to be in breach of the terms. Congress has 60 days to decide on measures.
Mr Trump threatened to pull the plug on the whole deal if Congress did not bring in punitive measures. This would have sounded ominous from any other President, but one has to bear in mind that he has made the threat unitarily withdraw the US from the deal repeatedly before along with threats issued on a range of other issues.
Another recurring aspect of his administration, confusion and contradiction, surfaced on the issue of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had told journalists at a briefing on Thursday evening that selective sanctions would be used against individual members. Mr Trump stated that he had ordered the US Treasury to sanction the whole Corps. What this actually means remains unclear, as the State Department stressed that it was not designating the organisation a terrorist group.
Mr Trump has taken his now customary swipe at Barack Obama, blaming him for Iran’s supposed wrongdoings. He will impose sanctions on individuals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) but not, importantly, prescribe it a terrorist organisation. He accused Tehran of supporting terrorism and attacked its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. These are charges he has made before.
The main reason that Mr Trump was unable to scrap the agreement is that he is isolated on the issue, apart from a few unsavoury allies.
The other five signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China (the P5+1 Group ) all repeatedly stressed that Iran is keeping its side of the bargain. This evening, within minutes of Mr Trump’s address, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy head said the deal was “ robust” and that there “ no violations of any of the commitments in the agreement.”
Senior people in Trump’s administration, Mr Tillerson, Defence Secretary General James Mattis and National Security Advisor Lieutenant General HR McMaster have all supported the deal.. Interestingly, these three were hawks on Iran before they arrived at their post and started weighing the evidence.
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