http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-power-move-iran-nuclear-deal-us-motivation-1.4654175

'An ego move': If Trump's exit from the Iran deal protects Americans, he's not saying how

'This is the most disastrous decision the Trump administration has ever made,' analyst says

Thomas G MacMillan

 
Jennifer McIsaac






Gord McPherson


 
Sue Dow

 
Ken Likness

 



  
Gorden Feist
  
Kimmy Smith


 
Maxim Verite



http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-iran-nuclear-deal-1.4653154

Trump pulls U.S. out of 'disastrous' Iran nuclear deal, will restore sanctions

Iran responds by warning of a 'short' window for negotiation with countries remaining in the deal

The Associated Press· Posted: May 08, 2018 11:37 AM ET

2744 Comments

 Commenting is now closed for this story.

 
 thomas stewart

Trump is a reckless fool.

Iran is a rising nation, a significant regional power and the Accord was a reasonable way to have Iran and the West move forward after so many decades of very bitter conflict.

This is a sad moment.





"Sad may come later if common sense does not finally become part of Trump's narcissistic reasoning"

There will be no common sense---not from this President---and that's why it is a sad moment. I see this as an opportunity lost.

It may well turn out to be something more than 'sad' if, in a worst case scenario, this act leads to an escalation of tensions between Iran and the US-Israel Axis of Imbecility and an outbreak of overt hostilities.

It is astonishing to think that I am looking to Iran to be the 'grown up' in this scenario.



FYI I am a whistle blower about financial crimes and I made certain that everybody in the know knows it. That is the reason why I ran for public office in Canada five times while suing the Crown and legions of lawyers etc.

As David McCaig said to you after you replied to me

"FOLLOW THE MONEY"

Methinks I should humbly suggest that folks Google the following words and check my work ASAP before Trump and his greedy NATO buddies make the Cold War 2.0 much worse than it already is.

Trump David Amos NAFTA FATCA

I suspect all folks blessed with common sense consider Trump's cronies applying for the Nobel Peace Prize on his behalf to be the ultimate joke N'esy Pas?


 
Kevin Graves (AKA Jaspersdad)



  
Jamie Robins



  
Edna Knight

 
Dave Hall







 
Dionne Albert

Jonas Prince

  
thomas stewart




No, I don't think Trump is trying to provoke Iran (although that might indeed be the outcome). I think he is so focused on his own needs to A) be seen to fulfill his campaign pledge and B) rouse up the 'base' with a good walloping action against a longstanding 'enemy' that he just acts without taking into account the possible consequences.

This is about his boasting points. He will strut around like a peacock for a few days thinking he has 'shown those Iranians'.

It is a good cover over after the whole Giuliani debacle on the weekedn

'An ego move': If Trump's exit from the Iran deal protects Americans, he's not saying how

'This is the most disastrous decision the Trump administration has ever made,' analyst says

Trump announces his decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
It's a "catastrophe,""horrendous,""a disaster,""insane,""one-sided" and "nuclear blackmail."
U.S. President Donald Trump has said a lot of things over the years about the Iran nuclear deal he just reneged on.

So perhaps one of the most telling moments came Tuesday when the president fell silent as a reporter shouted a question to him. The president was holding aloft a signed executive order reinstating sanctions on Iran, effectively withdrawing the U.S. from the deal negotiated three years ago among six other world powers.

"How," the journalist asked, "does this make America safer?"
Trump ignored her question. She repeated her query.

"Thank you very much," the president said, wrapping up. "This will make America much safer."










It was a non-answer that only served to confirm the suspicions of Suzanne Marlowe, deputy director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.

"He couldn't answer. He didn't explain, he doesn't have an answer to that," Marlowe said. "If he's convinced the restrictions imposed were insufficient, or the monitoring of the regime was insufficient, how does the absence of these measures and restrictions provide greater security for the U.S.?"

And does this administration have a viable Plan B to re-engage Iran? The apparent answer, she said, is no.

What was Trump hoping to achieve?

 

Opponents of the Obama-era accord want to scrap it on the grounds it has expiration dates. They also argue it isn't tough enough on security issues that are outside the bounds of the deal. But a U.S. withdrawal doesn't unravel the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, entirely.

To restore sanctions to their heights, turning everything to the max, he did not leave room for ambiguity. That's a power move.-  Behnam  Ben  Taleblu , Foundation for  Defense  of Democracies

That depends on whether Iran decides to honour its end of the bargain with the other signatories — Germany, France, the U.K., China, Russia and the European Union — despite the U.S. departure.
Trump's stated goal is to renegotiate the Iran deal to terms he likes. So he withdrew.
"That's a power move by the president," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an expert on Iranian security with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "To restore sanctions to their heights, turning everything to the max, he did not leave room for ambiguity. That's a power move."

To Marlowe, it's not so much a "power move" as a self-serving one.

"I would interpret it as an ego move," she said. "It played to his own sense of identification as sort of the master of the deal," even at the risk of a global calamity.

What was Tuesday's announcement about?

 

Trump declared the U.S. would no longer waive key sanctions on Iran. Taking away this relief amounts to reneging on the deal. Four months ago, in January, Trump set a 120-day deadline, vowing he would back out of the deal unless amendments were made. The deadline comes up on May 12.
"This is a last chance. In the absence of such an agreement, the United States will not again waive sanctions in order to stay in the Iran nuclear deal," Trump said at the time.

Since then, former Trump advisers who backed the deal, including former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, have been replaced by hawks John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.

Why are the deal's proponents worried?

Global signatories and many non-proliferation experts believe the president is making a serious diplomatic mistake. They fear that American withdrawal will threaten to:

• Give Iran justification to resume its nuclear weapons program immediately.
• Crumble the accord backed by six other entities and nations, further isolating the U.S. diplomatically from its closest allies.
• Undermine credibility in American deal-making abroad, just as North Korea needs to know whether it can trust the U.S. to keep its word ahead of a summit on denuclearization.
• And boost Iranian hard-liners who are most hostile to the U.S.

"This is the most disastrous decision the Trump administration has ever made. For all his lies and firings, none have affected U.S. national security as profoundly and negatively as this," said Joseph Cirincione, president of the global security foundation Ploughshares Fund.

What did the U.S. get out of the deal?

In exchange for relief from crippling sanctions, Iran was required to:

• Cease plans to obtain highly enriched uranium, the fuel needed to make nuclear weapons, for a period of 15 years. (Iran was permitted to enrich uranium to a concentration of 3.67 per cent — far lower than the 90 per cent purity needed to make a bomb.)
• Reduce its number of operating nuclear centrifuges from around 19,000 in July 2015 to only 5,060 of its oldest and least-efficient centrifuges.
• Give up 98 per cent of its uranium stockpiles, which, according to the Obama administration, would have been enough to make eight to 10 bombs in 2015.
• Allow robust inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency of its nuclear activities to verify its compliance.

The commitments would have increased the time it would take for Iran to acquire enough material to make one bomb to more than a year. In 2015, Iran could have made a bomb within two to three months, according to the White House.

Why did Trump hate the Iran deal?

It excluded what Trump called "sinister" activities on regional security issues. For example, the terms didn't limit Iran's ballistic missile development or its support for militant groups like Hezbollah or Hamas.

Trump also hates the fact that it includes sunset clauses after 10 and 15 years.

Inspections would still carry on, but that hasn't appeased critics of the deal like Jed Babbin, a former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defence in the first Bush administration.

"The president wants to make it essentially permanent. He wants to make the inspection regime something more realistic than what we have now," Babbin said in an interview.

Trump falsely claimed that Iran is allowed to "self-inspect" its sites — an allegation the International Atomic Energy Agency rejects.
"That's baloney," said Cirincione, with Ploughshares Fund. "They're referring to an inspection of a military facility at Parchin, where the Iranians collected the samples that the IAEA then photographed and tested. But the IAEA has complete authority to go anywhere they want with notice."

Did Iran cheat on the deal?

Iran has not technically violated the deal, according to the IAEA's reports. Even the Trump administration grudgingly admitted so, recertifying the deal twice — first in April, then again in July.

By October, Trump refused to certify the deal again, complaining that Iran violated "the spirit" of the arrangement. He did not reimpose sanctions at that time.

How is this different than decertification?

This is the first time since Trump came into office that he opted not to renew the waivers. That's different from decertifying the deal.

"This time, we're really toying with U.S. implementation of the deal and whether the U.S. will remain true to its commitments," said David Mortlock, a sanctions lawyer who worked on Iran-related issues in the Obama administration.

Certification of the deal is a domestic issue. Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the president must "recertify" to Congress every 90 days that Iran is complying with the deal.

Decertifying the deal gave Congress the power to reimpose sanctions. Lawmakers allowed the easing to continue.

Is the Iran deal popular?

A recent CNN poll suggests 63 per cent of Americans favour the Iran nuclear deal while one done by polling firm Morning Consult found 56 per cent support it.

Although it doesn't tie up a host of nasty regional security issues, proponents reason that it beats an alternative in which Tehran is free to increase nuclear activities right away.

Trump pulls U.S. out of 'disastrous' Iran nuclear deal, will restore sanctions

Iran responds by warning of a 'short' window for negotiation with countries remaining in the deal

The Associated Press· Posted: May 08, 2018 11:37 AM ET

Last Updated: 11 hours ago








President says U.S. will not be held hostage to 'nuclear blackmail' 1:34


President Donald Trump announced Tuesday the U.S. will pull out of the landmark nuclear accord with Iran, dealing a profound blow to U.S. allies and potentially deepening the president's isolation on the world stage.

"The United States does not make empty threats," he said from the White House in a televised address.
Trump's decision means Iran's government must now decide whether to follow the U.S. and withdraw or try to salvage what's left of the deal. Iran has offered conflicting statements about what it may do — and the answer may depend on exactly how Trump exits the agreement.
Trump said he would move to reimpose all sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 deal, not just the ones facing an immediate deadline. This had become known informally as the "nuclear option" because of the near certainty that such a move would scuttle the deal.

"At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction. That a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program," Trump said. "Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie."

He cited intelligence documents published last week by Israel, saying those documents "conclusively" showed Iran's "history of pursuing nuclear weapons. The fact is, this was a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made."

"It didn't bring calm, it didn't bring peace and it never will."

According to Reuters, most of the material the Israeli prime minister presented was from before the 2015 accord was finalized. Netanyahu did say, however, that Iran had added to its "nuclear weapons knowledge" since then.

What's next?

Supporters of fixing the agreement had hoped Trump would choose a piecemeal approach that could leave more room for him to reverse himself and stay in the deal if he could secure the additional restrictions that European nations tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with him.

Still, the administration planned to allow a grace period of at least three months and possibly up to six months so that businesses and governments can wind down operations that will violate the reimposed U.S. sanctions.

A slower withdrawal process could allow more room for Trump to reverse course later and decide to stay — if he secures the additional restrictions on Iran that European nations tried unsuccessfully to negotiate to prevent him from withdrawing.

Indeed, as administration officials briefed congressional leaders about Trump's plans Tuesday, they emphasized that just as with a major Asia trade deal and the Paris climate pact that Trump has abandoned, he remains open to renegotiating a better deal, one person briefed on the talks said.

Obama calls decision 'serious mistake'

Trump has lambasted the 2015 agreement, which was brokered by former president Barack Obama's administration, since his days as a presidential candidate.

On Tuesday, Obama said Trump's move was a "serious mistake" and "misguided," especially because Iran has been complying with the deal.

"The consistent flouting of agreements that our country is a party to risks eroding America's credibility, and puts us at odds with the world's major powers," Obama said.

Without the deal, the U.S. "could eventually be left with a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East," Obama said.

He added that the deal remains a model for what diplomacy can accomplish, including when it comes to North Korea.

Watch to see more of Trump's statement.









Former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry, who played a key role in the Obama administration's effort to craft the deal, also said that withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal "doesn't make sense."

Kerry, speaking at a gathering on food innovation in Milan on Tuesday, says he challenges anyone to find an agreement tougher than the one in place now.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres also called the deal a "major achievement in nuclear non-proliferation and diplomacy" and said he was "deeply disappointed" with Trump's decision.

Guterres called on all other UN member states to continue to support the Iran agreement.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that France, Germany and the U.K. "regret the U.S. decision" and that "the nuclear non-proliferation regime is at stake."

Macron said that they would work on a "broader" agreement "covering nuclear activity ... and stability in the Middle East, notably Syria, Yemen and Iraq."

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday reiterated Canada's support for the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

"Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons," Freeland said in a statement, adding that the 2015 deal put Iran's nuclear program under a "rigorous and unprecedented international verification regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency."

Freeland's statement said while the deal isn't perfect, it has "helped to curb a real threat to international peace and security."

The foreign minister also noted that Canada has condemned Iran's ballistic missile program and maintains sanctions targeting it.

Iran, Israel react 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani reacted quickly to Trump's announcement in a live address on state television, saying there is a "short time" to negotiate with the countries remaining in the nuclear deal and he will be sending his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to meet with them.

Rouhani warned Iran could start enriching uranium "in the next weeks."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, praised Trump's decision, calling it a "historic move."

Netanyahu, a leading critic of the deal, said leaving it unchanged would be "a recipe for disaster, a disaster for our region, a disaster for the peace of the world."









The president said today he's withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal 11:11