President Trump waved sanctions several times, but today, as expected, Trump unilaterally pulled out of a nuclear deal with Iran.
Trump cancelled the deal despite pleas from European leaders and legitimate concerns in Congress.
Trump’s decision, announced at the White House, follows the failure of last-ditch efforts by Britain, France and Germany to convince him that his concerns about “flaws” in the accord could be addressed without violating its terms or ending it altogether.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a sometime Trump critic, warned Tuesday that the ramifications of a U.S. withdrawal could reach beyond the Middle East.
“The agreement obviously had problems it didn’t address, Iran’s malign behavior or ballistic missiles. But after you’re in it and Iran has already realized the benefits of it … to now allow them to get out of their obligations on the nuclear side would be foolhardy, in my view,” Flake told reporters. “And it also says more about our willingness to work with our allies. We’re having enough problems around the world in terms of our reliability, whether it’s trade or commercial engagements or security arrangements.”
Sanctions Reinstated
Full Video Statement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul3670EsN-k
Trump refused to answer question about the pullout, instead briefly commenting on progress in North Korea.
Irony
When it comes to kidnapping, torture, lies, and stirring up trouble in the Mideast, the US is second to none.
Supposedly, Israel has proof Iran reneged on the deal. Let’s see the proof.
EU Has Most to lose
Who’s Telling the Truth?
Ominous Pullout
Hard-Liners, Israel Win – Everyone Else Loses
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/993922474151727106
My Take
Dear Europe: Grow a Backbone on Something Important, Defy Trump on Sanctions
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Trump just likes the attention he gets from breaking things he doesn’t understand but knows will upset people. His appeal to his base is not what he does, but who he upsets.
It is also telling when your negotiating opposite reminds you regularly that it intends to destroy your allies, and ultimately you. This is known as “testing” to see how far the opposition can be pushed. Here’s a secret. When your negotiating opponent says “Death to you and yours,” leave the table without explanation. Otherwise you are assuring the opposition that you’ll give up lots more….and we did.
But more telling is the nature of the negotiations themselves. For everyone who has actually negotiated a stressed deal, our negotiators appeared to be completely incompetent. When Iran would repudiate an earlier agreed term, we simply continued as though it didn’t matter. The most notorious was there refusal to sign the heads of agreement in March, when they suddenly claimed that was not part of the framework for agreement, which it was.
Anyone who carefully followed the Iran deal negotiations and its terms would have to be curious as to why we “made” the deal. In fact it does not provide for our oversight of their development facilities (the US agents are excluded from any oversight), nor are all of their development facilities subject to oversight….especially one of their major military development sites.
The Iran deal was not signed agreement (deal)? it is not a treaty and wasn’t sent to congress. The (deal)? was a verbal agreement that basically allows Iran to continue there nuclear development under guidance and we lift sanctions and send them money. Where did the $150 billion come from?
I’m shocked, shocked that a politician would lie 🙂
I rather think that Trump is just trying to drive up the price of oil (successfully) by making it harder for Iran to produce and export oil. Higher oil prices help fracking companies go out of business slower, and these fracking companies employ a lot of Trump’s voters.
Russia is happy to cooperate with driving up oil prices, thus Netanyahu was guest of honor at the Victory Day parade in Moscow yesterday while Israel was bombing Iranian forces in Syria. And the price of oil went up 🙂
The EU is very opposed to higher oil prices, and thus is trying to ‘save’ the JCPOA.
As Lord Palmerston said, “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests”. The USA now probably wants higher oil prices. Saudi Arabia and Russia want higher oil prices. Nations will behave according to their interests, and Trump, Putin and MBS will throw the EU and Iran under the bus to get higher oil prices.
“Realist said: I guess there’s no point signing any kind of agreement with the US. You can’t trust them to keep their word. The US took 200 years to build it’s reputation. Trump has trashed that reputation in a few months.” Ratification of a treaty requires 60 votes from Senate. Rule was unconstitutionally changed to require 60 to defeat ratification. Trump didn’t do that.
the names you mentioned are no more trustworthy than Samuel L Jackson’s strung out character, Gator, in Jungle Fever…but you go on giving known liars the benefit of the doubt
‘
“
Realist said: I guess there’s no point signing any kind of agreement with the US. You can’t trust them to keep their word. The US took 200 years to build it’s reputation. Trump has trashed that reputation in a few months.
“
Bingo
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A bunch of taxfeeders running around “signing agreements” with each other; that an entire world full of third parties are then supposed to be limited and restrained by lest they get hauled off to Gitmo to be waterboarded for the amusement of the less than zeros in the agreement signing club, serves no purpose nor point, period.
Valid, binding agreements are agreed to by individuals. Not a gaggle of privileged twits possessing no other qualities than superior armament, claiming to rule them. The only upside to Trump continuing to double down on this kind of serially-dumbed-down-by-every-President-since-the-beginning-of-the-Progressive-Era, is that it will open the eyes of a few more to the pointlessness of it all. More smuggling of goods between Iran and Europe. Through Turkey and Greece, as well as via Sicily by “those guys.” And a more realistic assessment of the usefulness (as in none) of governments and their policies and sanctions by more people. Both in Iran, Europe and beyond.
After all, the entirety of what the taxfeeders and their sycophant army calls “The System,” is absolutely nothing whatsoever more than a simple theft racket. By which the pointless, useless, worthless but connected and privileged, are robbing the rest. Under one contrived and ridiculous auspice or another. The less legitimacy is left in any of it, the better.
“What keeps happening?”
Duh! A country transacting in US dollars stops doing so and then gets attacked soon. Iraq, Libya, Syria. Iran is next.
“What keeps happening?”!!!! No wonder you are so clueless that you didn’t get it and still don’t.
The Israeli lobbyists and its patrons win again. Hooray for 21st century democracy.
This deserves a +1
“Kennedy slept in the Oval Office during the crisis. Too bad that Kennedy was our last hope.” …….if Kennedy was a president today he would be smeared mercilessly by the media for the Marilyn Monroe affair, and his imaged damaged. And who knows what other secrets would have popped up if he and his family was put though the ringer on a daily basis like Trump is. Presidents actually had some privacy back then.
Bingo
The phone that we called to contact the Kremlin was across the street in a warehouse on the 4th floor. Kennedy slept in the Oval Office during the crisis. Too bad that Kennedy was our last hope.
During the Bay of Pigs, Russia didn’t do anything since it was not an ally of Cuba, yet. The missile crisis happed when the US sneaked in missiles into Turkey and the USSR felt it was only fair to do the same with Cuba. The two events are disconnected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApYj2RnWBfM
Whirlaway I have no idea what you are talking about. More importantly, neither do you. What keeps happening? The only thing I can tell is inane comments from you. Knock off the stupidity NOW.
I remember it well. Actually, Fidel pitched a flamboyant fit AFTER Khrushchev had agreed with Kennedy to trade missiles in Cuba for our missiles in Turkey and sent word to Fidel of that fact. Fidel’s flamboyance in flaming at Moscow for not nuking New York was for Fidel, like most things he did.
Years later, it became public that Kennedy had called Eisenhower and asked him what he thought. Ike said Kennedy should stand his ground, that there wasn’t a chance the Kremlin leadership would opt to be nuked over an island of fifteen million people in the Carribean.
With Bolton and Pompeo running foreign policy, it’s full steam ahead.
I believe I read somewhere during the Bay of Pigs Castro felt so strongly about his cause that he was willing to take the bullet and allow Cuba to be decimated if Russia launched. So the mutually destruction thinking may not be that sound.
Mish does a good job of arguing the libertarian side of foreign policy issues like this. And I generally agree with him. But If we were all sitting in a room with Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfawitz, Bolton, etc..….What would they tell us that they told George W (Iraq), Obama (Libya), Trump (Syria, Iran) to convince them to do what they did? Why do these presidents all end up caving? I like to try and operate under the Charlie Munger rule that says, “don’t opine about a topic until you know the other sides argument as good (or better) than your own”. Is there a “truth” that “we can’t handle”, as Jack Nicholson said in a Few Good Men?
You keep saying it and it keeps happening. Who do I believe, you or my lying eyes?!
Seems every headline Trump grabs these days is over foreign policy. He can’t resist jawboning with North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Syria, or whoever the enemy de jour happens to be.
The domestic stuff, the lock her up, build the wall, MAGA, etc are but a distant memory now. Orange is bent on becoming a war president and pleasing his true constituents, the Israelis and the Saudis.
Bolton is a neocon wetdream, another dyed in the wool chickenhawk
I think historians will mark 1991 as the high tide for American power. The end of the Soviet Union, defeat of Saddam in the first gulf war, a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians and generally an optimistic outlook.
All the goodwill the USA built around that time has been squandered by successive US governments, who failed at every opportunity to create lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and failed to develop genuinely friendly ties with Russia. The US, drunk on perceived invincibility, instead kowtowed to the Israeli-firsters in congress, belittled Russia, launched a disastrous war in 2003 and generally proceeded to behave like an international bully.
$20 trillion of debt later, a hollowed out industrial base, a kleptocratic financial sector that has drained the lifeblood from the economy and high tech businesses that rely on overseas talent to innovate, the US is clearly a power in decline. Trump’s decision is borne out of weakness, not strength. A true power would manage to create the desired outcome through diplomacy. It would be most embarrassing to the US if trade between Iran, Russia, the EU and China continued pretty much as before these sanctions were announced. It would show the US to be the weaker party on the international scene that it is.
OK Kiddies.
Today’s lesson is the difference between a “deal” and a Treaty.
A deal has no binding mechanism and can be changed at will from one president to another. For example – see Ukraine Defense, Paris Agreement and Iran Agreement (among many others).
A TREATY is binding. However, NONE of obama’s terrible “deals” would have passed the senate.
Kinda like DACA.
In fact, Obama damaged greatly the US reputation as an ally or partner. Consider Moamar Qaddafi’s Libya as poster child (he complied mostly, wasn’t a real threat, then he was still screwed). And, what the outcome? A failed state with animosity to western values. (Don’t we miss Qadaffi now?)
Only has to be wrong once too.
TRUTHSEEKER EMAIL ME
As I have commented a dozen times in the past – your other remark is posted – Your email either is not right or it is going into spam
Had the chance to tour Iran last year. In nearly three weeks I think I saw two people actually praying. Hardly a religious hotbed. If the pond life at NATO/Israel/Saudi Arabia are planning a regime change then they might get more than they bargained for. Qasem Soleimani is very popular (head of QUDS force). He tore ISIS a new one in Syria and Iraq.
Look, I’m just doing theory, strategory and policy development here; Do I have to do everything?
Look, I’m just doing strategy and policy here; do I have to do everything?
Nice theory. What if happens to be wrong?
When I was a kid growing up in the 50s, I feared Nukes. I’ve since come to view them as the best thing humans have invented since the wheel, steam engine, and Jack Daniels. Since 1945, Nukes have kept the narcissistic, psychopathic alpha males, who inevitably end up running every nation, from the temptation of launching WWIII. It’s a huge waste of societal capital for Iran to be re-inventing the wheel building nukes. We should sell them nukes, with a volume purchase discount, (minimum quantity ten), along with a guaranteed US response time of 30 minutes if they ever launch one. The certainty of immediate personal death and destruction will work with equal effectiveness on Temple keepers and megalomaniacs. Give Nukes a chance…
The deal was bogus (as explained above at length). Whether it should be cancelled now (given it was signed), is a good question. I’m mixed about that. Apparently, Trump decided (I hope for the better).
Israel’s role in this is debatable. I wish it had more influence in the first place when Obama signed it.
Israel may be most vocal about the problems with this deal, but the heavy weights are the Saudi’s actually (the whole/most Suni Arab countries in-fact).
It is really rare to see the Arab states and Israel on the same side of an issue, btw.
Uhh, uhmm, would the answer be “Illuminati” to your question
?
Israel and nutcase warmongers are running US foreign policy
The idea this as about the dollar is lunacy.
Mish has a huge blind spot about this but this is what predicted that the deal would be canceled.
https://www.rt.com/news/425497-iran-drops-dollar-war/
The next step is to prep the American people for a war with Iran.
Watch and learn, Mish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VobUNfYwlss
The sanctions were debatable, depending on one’s opinion about US interests. There is the point of view that this is simply not our business (regardless what the Iranians do). Another pov is that the sanctions don’t help anyways.
The Iran deal was bogus still. Why? Iran signed the NPT willingly. The NPT confers benefits and obligations. Iran violated the NPT flagrantly, while enjoying its benefits. The deal should have rolled back Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, such that Iran resume compliance with the NPT it signed. Instead, the deal awarded Iran with an internationally accepted special status (effectively, NPT2).
Practically, the deal allows Iran to develop nuclear capacity to the brink, stopping short of the last steps of assembling and testing nuclear devices. The deal restricted Iran for merely eight years.
Stopping the sanctions unilaterally would have arguably been better than the “deal”, because the deal gives Iran an internationally accepted status and legitimacy (akin to NPT2). This narrows the options of countries threatened by Iran, because Iran is in its rights to develop nuclear infrastructure thanks to NPT2.
Now think about the ramifications. Other countries in the middle-east, which did sign the NPT, kick started recently their own nuclear programs. Consider the message to would be violators of the NPT.
Now back to the sanctions. Was it a good idea? I question that, too. At the same time, suppose a country violated the NPT it signed, then what are the consequences (or is the NPT just a meaningless paper)?
North Korea, btw, hasn’t signed the NPT (afaik). And, still the US and some of its allies are obsessed with its nuclear program. Considering North Korea inaction internationally, I’m more concerned about how Iran would use such a weapon (given how active and aggressive it has been towards other countries).