Is Trump Scheming to Kill the Iran Deal?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/opinion/trump-killing-iran-nuclear-deal.html

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As if the steeply rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula weren’t enough, President Trump seems determined to kill the Iran nuclear deal, against the near unanimous opinion of his closest foreign policy advisers.

According to a recent article in Foreign Policy, after he grudgingly agreed to recertify the deal a few weeks ago, Mr. Trump assigned a team of White House staff members to develop a case within the next three months for declaring that Iran had violated the agreement.

With this new initiative on Iran, Mr. Trump puts the world, and his presidency, at great risk.

For one thing, it brings to a boil the simmering conflict between the president’s official foreign policy advisers on the National Security Council staff and in the State and Defense Departments, and a circle of advisers led by the radical unilateralist Stephen Bannon. The latter group will handle the president’s Iran assignment, and while anything could happen, it’s a good bet that they will cherry-pick facts to give the president what he wants: an excuse to scuttle the Iran deal.

Will Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, or Gen. John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, let this happen? Some might resign; these are not men known for their willingness to tolerate such shenanigans. But whether they resign or try to stick it out, a political decision to decertify Iran would signal a clear defeat for the administration’s foreign policy professionals, and a victory for the ideologues.

Decertifying Iran in this way could also mean an even more serious rupture with our European allies. Walking away from the Paris climate agreement and clashing with Europe over trade have already created a fissure with Germany and France. But Europe no doubt hopes that these early defections won’t be followed by still more egregious efforts to undermine the trans-Atlantic consensus.

An abrupt sprint away from the Iran deal — a deal negotiated by all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany and the European Union — without evidence of serious violations could represent a point of no return. Presumably, the rest of the signatories will insist on maintaining the deal, setting off a cascade of diplomatic and economic recriminations against Europe and souring relations for years to come.

And then, of course, there’s what decertification would mean for the Middle East, and the likelihood of a renewed showdown with Tehran. Mr. Trump has already taken steps to isolate Iran, aligning closely with Saudi Arabia and right-wing forces in Israel, who have long made torpedoing any agreement a key goal in their relationships with Washington.

Mr. Trump seems eager to please them, even at the risk of regional destabilization. Granted, Tehran has capitalized on regional unrest to extend its influence. But decertifying Iran would almost certainly increase the already considerable suspicion and hostility between Tehran and Washington — and this time, America will not be able to count on Europe, Russia, China and the rest of the world as a diplomatic partner. This would be a high price to pay for aligning the United States with our Gulf allies in a Saudi-inspired attempt to settle scores with Tehran.

Finally, when the president starts directing his White House staff to concoct facts and arguments for ill-considered policies, that is usually a sign of bad things, including illegal acts, to come.

Both Richard Nixon’s “plumbers” and Ronald Reagan’s Iran-contra fiasco began with a president frustrated by laws, facts or conditions he could not control. More recently, George W. Bush’s White House, bent on removing Saddam Hussein from power, cherry-picked intelligence in making a case for the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and trying to establish a link between Hussein, Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks. Under circumstances like these, somewhere, someone, is likely to step — or be pushed — over the legal line.

When that happened in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, one president was forced to resign when the White House tapes confirmed he had personally directed illegal actions; the other saved himself by convincing the American people that he was unaware of the illegal shenanigans happening within his White House walls, aided by senior advisers unwilling to turn on their boss. President Bush left office with his, and America’s, credibility in tatters and Iran’s influence over the region growing rapidly.

With recertification being gamed to wreck the nuclear deal, the clock will start ticking on President Trump, too.