Donald Trump accuses Iran of violating the nuclear deal

By D.S.O.R. | WASHINGTON, DC

HE HAD to comfort himself by accusing Barack Obama of a historic blunder and by slandering the leaders of France and Britain as shills greedy for Iranian cash. But on October 13th—amid much bluster—President Donald Trump finally bowed to reality and the advice of his national security advisers and backed away from campaign promises to unilaterally abandon the deal to freeze Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.

Make no mistake, this was a climb-down, at least for now. Mr Trump has spent more than two years calling the deal, brokered by Mr Obama and other world leaders in 2015, an “embarrassment” that left Iranians “laughing at us”. These are grave charges in Mr Trump’s foreign policy lexicon. But this week the America First president balked when offered the chance to blow up the deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. That chance arose thanks to a reporting requirement put in place by a suspicious Congress back when Mr Obama was still in the White House.

Because congressional Republicans, back then, worried that a weak-willed president might turn a blind eye to Iranian cheating, they passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA). This obliges the White House to certify Iranian compliance with the deal and every 90 days to certify to Congress that the sanctions relief granted to Iran is “appropriate and proportionate” when weighed against the benefits to American national security.

Though you would not have known it from Mr Trump’s fierce talk about Iran committing “multiple violations” of the JCPOA, his administration this week agreed with the other signatories to the deal—namely, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the European Union—that Iran is “in technical compliance” with its terms. Those are the words used by Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, in a White House briefing on the eve of Mr Trump’s address.

That leaves the most consequential certification—the one involving JCPOA—in place. Mr Trump took that step, to be blunt, because other signatories let him know that if he walked away from that deal now, he would walk alone. In public interventions, European government leaders and ambassadors said they would not re-open JCPOA and urged Mr Trump not to break the unity that had brought Iran to halt its nuclear centrifuges and ship enriched uranium out of the country. The German ambassador to Washington, DC observed at a public event that if America did not honour its agreement with Iran, it would send a dangerous signal to North Korea that "diplomacy is not reliable,” just when the West needed “credibility” in tackling rogue states with nuclear ambitions.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, offered Mr Trump some diplomatic cover. He offered French support for supplemental side deals that might impose extra curbs on Iran alongside the JCPOA. But that main deal, while imperfect, was the “best possible”, Mr Macron told reporters back in September. He added that he had asked Mr Trump to explain what might be his alternative, and confessed: “I didn’t understand it”.

On October 13th Mr Trump instead announced that he cannot certify under INARA that the suspension of sanctions is proportionate to American interests—passing the buck to Congress to respond. He invited Congress to help fix the deal’s flaws, which to be fair are real, and worry European signatories too.

The most obvious problems involve the fact that JCPOA has not prevented Iran from developing and testing ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and that it includes “sunset clauses” which after some years allow Iran to resume large-scale nuclear enrichment. As Mr Tillerson outlined in his briefing, Congress is now faced with three options: do nothing, re-impose sanctions on Iran even though allies say that would not be justified, or a “third path” favoured by the administration, which is to give INARA “more teeth” to curb missile research and to declare that America’s opposition to Iran resuming nuclear weapons work never expires. In order to demonstrate American resolve and secure more leverage in talks, Mr Tillerson said that his boss wants Congress to include “very firm trigger points” that automatically re-impose sanctions on Iran.

Pondering the president’s Iran strategy at a dinner on October 12th for a group of reporters organised by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Dennis Ross, a former senior Middle East and Iran envoy, observed that inserting automatic triggers designed to blow up the JCPOA would be a “smart piece of leverage” if the single most important priority for European powers is to keep America in the deal. “But if the Europeans say they can’t go there, then you walk away by yourself,” Mr Ross advised Team Trump. “And who are you putting pressure on, then? Yourselves or the Iranians?” Iran’s Islamic regime has historically responded to pressure, as long as it faces a unified “phalanx” of world powers, Mr Ross added.

The question now is whether Mr Trump is capable of playing the unifier. There are bipartisan majorities in Congress for tougher action on Iran, opposed only by a few Democratic doves and a number of Republican hawks who argue that the JCPOA was a missed opportunity to pursue the correct Iran policy, namely regime change in Tehran. In his address Mr Trump sided with those hawks, charging Mr Obama with a historic blunder. By 2015, Mr Trump asserted, sanctions had created intense domestic pressure on Iran. The Obama administration lifted those sanctions, he charged, “just before what would have been the total collapse of the Iranian regime.”

Mr Trump could not resist an extra twist of the knife, linking the Iran deal to his scorn for free-trade deals such as the NAFTA pact with Mexico and Canada. “As I have said many times, the Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into. The same mindset that produced this deal is responsible for years of the terrible trade deals that have sacrificed so many millions of jobs in our country to the benefit of other countries.”

Echoing arguments voiced by the right of the Republican Party, by the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu and by the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Mr Trump also criticised the JCPOA for focusing narrowly on nuclear weapons, and for not curbing Iran’s other destabilising actions in the region, from funding terrorists and training groups that kill Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, to arming the Lebanese armed Shia movement, Hizbollah.

European governments respond that the JCPOA correctly and expressly focused on the vital question of nuclear weapons, to get a deal done. As he left the White House to board Marine One, his helicopter, after making his Iran address, Mr Trump seemed impatient with European leaders. In comments unlikely to promote much unity, he effectively accused Theresa May, the British prime minister, and Mr Macron, of being motivated by lucrative contracts for British and French companies when they urged him to stick with the Iran deal.

Asked by pool reporters on the South Lawn of the White House whether he had spoken to Mrs May and Mr Macron about remaining in the Iran deal, the president replied: “They would love me to stay in, only for one reason: look at the kind of money that’s being sent.” Mr Trump mimicked sarcastically telling European colleagues that he understood their desire to help such firms as Renault, the car-maker. “Actually, Emmanuel called up and he talked to me. And I said, look Emmanel, they just gave Renault a lot of money. Take their money, enjoy yourselves. But we’ll see what happens,” Mr Trump said. If that sounded ominous, that was his intent.