Monday, May 14, 2018

Trump's Rational Response to the Iran Deal

Trump took the US out of the Iran deal on 8 May and chicken littles are squawking that this is the start of a new world war, just like they squawked over his mean tweets with North Korea. The Iran deal wasn't a treaty, it wasn't even an executive agreement. The deal was nothing more than one of Obama's "pen and stool" acts that had no legal weight and could be reneged on at any time without any legal trouble. The same is true for most of Obama's "legacy". Most of it was hot air that candidate Obama said he would never do because it was executive overreach. Now President Trump is destroying President Obama's legacy in accordance with Candidate Obama's original campaign, while fulfilling Candidate Trump's own campaign promises.

Why do we even need an Iran deal, other than for Obama to send billions of taxpayer dollars to some tinpot regime? We could have just ignored Iran and reinvested that money in fixing the roads or helping homeless veterans. The Iran deal did nothing for the US other than make Obama look good in the face of European globalist aristocrats. It was a PR stunt.

Some people say that the money was Iran's and the US stole it. Bullshit. Some Iranian diplomat didn't misplace a huge pallet of cash at an airport that the US dutifully held in a closet somewhere until it was time for Barry to ship it to them.

The deal didn't prevent them from getting nukes, it just postponed the time for when they can get them, and it allows them to inspect their own sites and everyone has to take them at their word that they're not lying. It was a bad deal that was nothing more than an excuse for Obama to give away US money.

$400 million was being held from an Iranian weapons purchase decades ago back when the Shah was still in power. Iran gave the US the money, the revolution broke out, and the US refused to give the money back. If the US wants to give the new Iran the money back, money that was paid when a different government was in place and Iran was essentially a different country, why take additional money from US taxpayers and add to it? The additional $1.3 billion was not Iranian money held by the FMF, that came from US taxpayers.

There's not going to be a war. The US won't start a war with Iran and bring in Russia, Iran won't start a war and get obliterated. Iran's not going to develop a nuke, because if they did it would start WW3. Where are they going to test it? The whole world will know and Israel and Saudi Arabia won't allow it. Israel may or may not have nukes and the Saudis can just buy nukes from Pakistan and they would turn Iran into a parking lot if the Iranians tried anything.

To me this looks like Trump is trying to set up a second Korea deal. After he makes peace with North Korea he's going to turn around and make a new deal with Iran so he can one up Obama.

Here's Trump's line of thinking. He could be right, he could be wrong, that's not important. What's important is that he does not intend to get us involved in another war. Trump engaged with Kim Jong Un in a flame war for several months, he threatened economic sanctions, and then Kim came to the negotiating table, shook hands with his Southern counterpart, released US prisoners, dismantled his nuclear site, and now stands to benefit from at least semi-normalised relations with the wider world.

Trump thinks he can repeat the same process in Iran. He thinks he can pull out of Obama's deal, toss out some strongly worded tweets, threaten sanctions, and then bring Iran to the negotiating table so he can gain even more acclaim internationally as a peacemaker.

That doesn't mean Trump's plan will work, that's just what he's thinking. He's not going to go to war. If he did he would lose reelection in 2020 and lose at the Korean summit. He's using harsh talk, like he always does, to 1. put down Obama and his "legacy" and 2. work toward re-negotiating the deal with Iran, which he will claim is the "best deal ever in the history of deals" to boost his own image.

Look at Trump's only incidents of sabre rattling so far. Twice he launched a limp-dicked salvo of missiles into Syria that accomplished absolutely nothing. That's it. All the chicken littles are running around thinking Trump is going to push for regime change when so far he's done nothing to indicate that he cares at all about who is running which country. Sure, he'll throw a few missiles around to appease the neocons and neolibs, but they'll all land in the same area and he'll alert the "enemy" ahead of time so they can evacuate before the bombs start falling. When Trump talks about regime change it's all a bunch of hot air to make himself look tough.

He even says that he's leaving open the possibility for renegotiating with Iran, which means that's what he intends to do. Everything else is just showboating. It's theater. Trump is a TV star, this is what he does.

Iran already said that it will comply with the deal so as not to lose its trade relations with Europe, so they're not going to race to get a nuke. Trump will let the Korean summit work out and then in a few months start working with Iran so he can claim that he has outdone Obama in everything.

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