On Friday the 13th, President Trump refused to “certify” Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement –the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. President Obama had signed the agreement at the United Nations and never submitted it to Congress to be reviewed and signed as a Treaty.
The certification process is an obligation of American law, the Iran Nuclear Review Act of 2015. It requires a President to report every 90 days whether Iran is complying with the deal. President Obama favored the certification process when he was promoting the nuclear deal in 2015, as a way of making Iran’s behavior the trigger for snap-back sanctions. Like Obamacare, the Iran agreement is not perfect and needs amendments. But it was a good place to start. And the time for its overhaul has finally arrived.
“Iran has made it clear that no one can prevent it from pursuing a peaceful nuclear program. The Iran nuclear issue can be comprehensively addressed only through face-to-face negotiations between Iran, America and Europe. America and Iran have to come out of the diplomatic and economic wilderness they have been in for the last 26 years, establish diplomatic relations and start a direct dialogue on how to resolve the nuclear dispute with a solution that allows Iran to develop nuclear power for peaceful means. Burying the past is the key to better U.S.-Iran relations. To expect the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter to abandon its right to nuclear technology is delusional”, I wrote in my 2007 book Custom Maid Knowledge for New World Disorder.
I have not had time to read the entire Iran nuclear agreement, but like many members of Congress and political commentators, I believe there are many unanswered and unknown reasons for the questions being raised about why the agreement was limited to Iran’s nuclear program and not its ballistic missile program, and numerous activities supporting terrorism in its continued biblical quest of imperialism and control of the Middle East. It’s unabashed support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and their joint support of Bashar al Assad’s murderous regime in Syria; supply of arms and military support to Hamas in Gaza and the civil war in Yemen, merit a review by Congress – the House of We the People – to determine if the agreement is in the best interests of America and if not, to amend it so it is. After all, everyone agrees the agreement does nothing to contain Iran’s destabilizing behavior in the Middle East and that given the agreement’s 10-year horizon, it merely delays rather than eliminates Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear bomb. Why and how is this in America’s national security interest? Questions I also raised in Custom Maid Knowledge for New World Disorder.
Trump is honoring a campaign pledge he made to “blow it up.” He denied certification because “Iranian aggression continues to this day. The regime remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”
“The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the US has ever entered into,” Trump said. “Iran can speed towards a rapid nuclear weapons breakout.”
Trump was right in calling Iran “a terrorist nation like few others,” and in using his executive powers to authorize the Treasury Department to impose tough new sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for their support of terrorism. The IRGC oversees the government’s military activities abroad, including its involvement in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen, and is accountable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his determination to spread extreme Shia Islam, in his race against Saudi Arabia to spread extreme Sunni Wahhabism. The world can do without either, preferably both!
The reality is, the potential economic consequences of a collapse of the nuclear deal if the U.S. withdraws, might just be enough to get Iran back to the negotiating table, notwithstanding the European, Russia and China outcries at Trump’s decision — and calls to move ahead with or without the US. A side-bar-additional U.S. benefits package, is the additional wake-up-alarm call to North Korea, U.N. permanent members of the Security Council and China – Iran’s top trading partner — about the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear program, while U.S. and South Korea navies and military support forces engage in new “war games,” — as China convenes its Communist Party Congress today! A multiple-frontal-barrage of disruptive Trumpisms.
I agree with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who said “We think we have a real opportunity to apply a legal remedy to some of the fundamental flaws of the deal.”
These flaws include curbs on Iran’s ballistic-missile program, demands for more access to military facilities for inspections, an extension of restrictions on nuclear development, and a curb on its foreign military engagements throughout the Middle East – long shots granted. But with long-term benefits.