Posted by Washington Free
Beacon
Published on May 8, 2018
John R. Houk, Blog Editor
© May 9, 2018
Yesterday President Trump did a magnificent thing. He ended
former President Obama’s (the next Benedict
Arnold at worst or Aaron
Burr at best) so-called Iran Nuke Deal that only delayed a
nuclear armed Iran. Obama’s lie: the deal prevented a nuclear armed Iran.
Traitors: Benedict Arnold,
Aaron Burr & Obama
President Trump’s election mandate from my perspective is to
unravel all the damning acts Obama’s designs to fundamentally transform America
into a State supremacist Socialist nation where the People are told how to
think rather than the People telling the government how to act.
Stopping to put trust in Iran’s criminal Islamofascist Shi’ite
ruling elite is not only a great thing for American National Interests, but
also for the people of Western Nations that have benefitted from actual free
elections deciding their national path.
ONE THING to keep in mind: The Iran Nuke Deal was NOT a
treaty ratified by the Senate. Obama chose to circumvent the Constitution (as
he had done so many times) and sign an agreement with Iran as an Executive
Order. An EO is easily undone by the next President’s EO action. Thank you President
Trump.
Below are a series of articles about President Donald Trump’s
decision with a few titles that may be of interest.
****************************
Promise Kept — Trump Nukes Iran
Deal
Yet another pillar of Barack Obama's horrible legacy
crumbles at Trump's hands.
May 9, 2018
Keeping his promise,
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will withdraw
from the “horrible” Iran
nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and
reinstate sanctions that were suspended as part of the deal. “We will not allow
American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not allow a regime
that chants ‘Death to America’ to gain access to the most deadly weapons on
earth,” Trump declared. “Today’s action sends a critical message: The United
States no longer makes empty threats. When I make promises I keep them.”
Despite attempts by the Europeans to dissuade Trump, despite
John Kerry’s smoke-filled-backroom
efforts to save the deal, and despite Iran warning that it
would be “a historic mistake” to withdraw, the president reiterated what he has
said all along: “We cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying
and rotten structure of the current agreement.” Trump reportedly remains open
to improving the deal, and he will now have economic leverage to persuade Iran
and the Europeans to do just that.
Barack Obama, who paid the Iranians $1.7
billion in ransom cash loaded on pallets as well as hundreds
of billions more in sanctions relief, predictably
criticized the decision to withdraw — which is tantamount to
an endorsement in our book. “Walking away from the JCPOA turns our back on
America’s closest allies,” Obama admonished, adding that it’s “a serious
mistake.” But the biggest mistake was made by Obama and his feckless secretary
of state, Kerry, caving in to one Iranian demand after another and agreeing to
the deal. As we said
at the time, “You want it bad, you’ll get it bad.”
Obama was so desperate for a foreign policy “victory” that
getting a deal was more important than the content of the deal. Having agreed
to a deal that he knew would never pass the Senate as a treaty, the minute the
ink was dry Obama instead ran to the United Nations, which passed a Security
Council Resolution establishing the deal’s terms. But only laws passed by the
U.S. Congress, or treaties approved by the Senate, are binding on the actions
of the United States. And as “constitutional scholar” Obama and long-time
Senator Kerry undoubtedly knew, any deal that really was in the United States’
best interest would have been able to pass muster in the Senate and gain the
two-thirds votes needed to ratify a treaty.
Obama and his various minions told us time after time that
the deal would moderate Iran’s behavior and help bring it back into the
community of nations, but a quick survey of recent events shows the spectacular
deception of that claim.
Iran is fighting a proxy war in Syria to keep Bashar
al-Assad’s murderous regime in power, and it probably has more troops on the
ground than any group other than the Syrian Army. It continues flying military
equipment into Syria via Iraq, attracting the occasional Israeli airstrike
(including one just
last night) and risking major escalation of the fighting there.
Its proxies
in Yemen have fired Iranian-made weapons at U.S. Navy ships in
the Red Sea, as well as used one of Iran’s signature weapons, the explosive
boat, to hit and severely damage a Saudi warship. Its ballistic missile
activity has continued unabated, despite UN Security Council Resolution 2231’s
prohibitions on such activity. In addition to missile testing, Iran has
actually fired ballistic missiles at targets in Syria, and its Yemeni proxies
have fired Iranian-made missiles into Saudi Arabia.
Needless to say, we don’t see much moderating in Iran’s
behavior. Worse, Obama helped fund Iran’s increased terror
sponsorship.
In the coming days and weeks we expect the various actors
that supported the deal — Democrats, the Leftmedia, the Europeans, the Iranians
— will all make the most of the opportunity to paint President Trump as a
bumptious and warmongering rube. The Europeans will follow Obama’s cue and
decry the undiplomatic behavior of withdrawing from a gentlemen’s agreement.
The Iranians will shout about the untrustworthy nature of the United States. We
even expect Rep. Maxine Waters will ascribe racism to President Trump’s
decision, claiming it is an act of spite against his African-American
predecessor.
But all the wailing and teeth-gnashing among various
Europeans, Iranians, Democrats (and even some short-sighted
Republicans) will merely serve to demonstrate the double injury
Obama inflicted when he accepted the deal. The first injury was the deal
itself. The second, as we said at the time, was
that some future president would have to withdraw and harm our standing with
friends and foes alike.
That day has now come, and our standing with our European
allies may indeed suffer temporarily. Iran may try to create even more mischief
around the Middle East. Oil
markets and the U.S. and world economies may feel some pain as
Iran’s oil market is squeezed.
But the undeniable fact is that the existing nuclear
agreement merely kicked the can down the road for a decade, ensuring that Iran
would emerge with a full, UN-approved nuclear fuel cycle that would enable very
rapid nuclear breakout in the future. Dealing with this problem now, even if
painful, is vastly better than dealing with it later, when it may not only be
painful but also deadly. Withdrawing from the nuclear deal is a first step in
the right direction.
On a final note, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un should take note
that Trump isn’t messing around. Perhaps he already has, as Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo returns home today from Pyongyang with three
released American hostages.
++++++++++++++++++
Donald Trump Ends the Obama
Mirage
The Iran nuclear deal, 2015-2018
President Trump announced that the United States would
withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aka the Iran
nuclear deal, on the afternoon of May 8. The deal, announced to
such fanfare in July 2015, did not live to see its third birthday. And for
that, I am grateful.
Why? Because the president said not only that America will
be leaving the accord. He declared that the period of waxing Iranian influence
in the Middle East is at an end. The deal financed several years of Iranian
expansion through Shiite proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. By
reimposing sanctions, President Trump will weaken an already ailing Iranian
economy. The Iranian currency, the rial, has plummeted in recent weeks.
Inflation is rampant. The financial system is corrupted, dysfunctional. Strikes
are proliferating,
and often turn into displays against the government. This is a situation the
United States should seek not to mitigate but to exacerbate.
Removing ourselves from the deal puts Iran on the defensive.
Its people and government are divided and uncertain how to respond. Its
leverage is minimal. Iranian citizens have seen their leaders use the money
from the deal not to improve the economic lot of the average person but to fund
the military, IRGC, and other instruments of foreign adventurism. Implicit in
the deal was recognition of the Islamic regime as a legitimate member of the
so-called "international community." President Trump has rescinded
that recognition and the standing that came with it. The issue is no longer
Iranian compliance with an agreement that contained loopholes through which you
could launch a Fateh-110 heavy missile. The issue is whether Iran chooses to
become a responsible player or not, whether it curbs its imperial designs, cuts
off its militias, abandons terrorism, opens its public square, and ceases its
threats to and harassment of the United States and her allies. That choice is
not Donald Trump's to make. It is the Iranian regime's.
Trump has made his choice. Like he did with the Supreme
Court, the Paris Climate Accord, and the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, Trump kept
a promise made many times throughout the campaign. In truth, anyone who has
listened to Trump over the last several years should not be surprised by his
decision. From the beginning, he understood that any deal which gives the
weaker party benefits up front in exchange for minimal temporary concessions is
not a deal worth taking. And since he does not accept the worldview that
inspired the deal, there is no reason for Trump to remain in it.
The worldview Trump opposes privileges therapy and dialogue
over realism and hard decisions. It imagines that the Iranian theocracy is a
reliable or trustworthy hedge against Sunni power and will liberalize gradually
as the arc of justice progresses. These are the ideas that motivated the
presidency of Barack Obama. The Iran deal was the signature achievement of
Obama's second term, and it is now gone. In truth, though, Obama's legacy was
disappearing long before Trump made his announcement. Obama's legacy, like much
of his self-presentation, was a mirage, a pleasing and attractive image that,
upon closer inspection, loses coherence.
Because he governed so extensively through executive order
and administrative fiat, because he was so contemptuous of criticism and had a
"my way or the highway" approach to negotiations with Republicans
(though not with Iranians), the longevity of Obama's agenda depended heavily on
his party winning a third consecutive term in the White House. As Tom Cotton
warned the Iranians years ago, an agreement entered into by a president and not
submitted to the Senate as a treaty can be abrogated by the next man who holds
the office. Hillary Clinton's failure doomed the Iran deal and the reputations
it had established. It was Barack Obama and John Kerry who allowed Donald Trump
to exit the deal by rejecting longstanding procedure. Perhaps it was knowledge
of this fact that inspired Kerry in his desperate attempt to preserve the
agreement.
Trump has spent much of his time in office reversing Obama
policies that were made outside of, or in opposition to,
America's constitutional framework. He has had the hardest time repealing
Obamacare, for the very reason that the Affordable Care Act was passed by
the Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. That is a lesson for any
president: To have a long-lasting influence on American life, work within the
system bequeathed to us by the Founders.
Because Republicans widely shared a negative attitude toward
the Iran deal, many people assume that President Trump is doing what any other
GOP president would do. But I am not sure. Another Republican president who had
come up through the political system, or been enmeshed in the foreign policy
establishment, or held elite opinion in esteem may well have given in to
pressure to remain in the Paris accord, keep the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, and
stay, at least partly, in the JCPOA. Trump's outsider status and independence
give him the freedom not only to flout political correctness but to repudiate
the international and domestic consensus in ways his supporters love.
It took a small boy to say the emperor had no clothes. And
it took Donald Trump to say that Barack Obama's foreign policy legacy was a
superficial and dangerous mirage.
Matthew
Continetti is the Editor in Chief of the Washington Free
Beacon. He can be reached at comments@freebeacon.com.
+++++++++++++++++++
Defying world, Trump says US
withdrawing from Iran nuclear deal
Citing Israeli intelligence, president slams
'defective' pact, promises 'highest level of economic sanction' on Tehran
8 May 2018, 9:46 pm
WASHINGTON — President Trump announced the US was
withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday, following through on a
campaign promise and defying European allies who implored him to maintain an
agreement that international agencies have said Tehran is honoring.
In a highly anticipated address from the White House’s
Diplomatic Reception Room, Trump cast the landmark agreement forged under
predecessor Barack Obama as “defective” and unable to rein in Iranian behavior
or halt the Islamic Republic’s quest to develop nuclear weapons.
“I’m announcing today that the United States will withdraw
from the Iran nuclear deal,” he said, adding that his administration “will be
instituting the highest level of economic sanction.”
Trump said the 2015 agreement, which included Germany,
France, Russia, China and Britain, was a “horrible one-sided deal that should
never ever have been made.”
His remarks came ahead of his self-imposed May 12 deadline
to walk away from the deal; that date is when the president would be required
to renew waivers on sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program as required under
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal is formally called.
Trump emphasized that sanctions would also apply to other
nations that did business with Iran, meaning that the United States could very
well apply sanctions on its closest European allies. “America will not be held
hostage to nuclear blackmail,” Trump said.
However, officials said European companies would have
several months to pull out of the Iranian market.
Trump said that his explosive move would signal “the United
States no longer makes empty threats” on the world stage. “When I make
promises, I keep them,” he said.
Responding to the move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
who has lobbied against the deal, said he offered his full support for Trump’s
“bold move.”
In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran would remain
in the deal, but his country could resume nuclear activity if need be.
European signatories vowed to stick by the agreement.
In January, Trump waived sanctions for the third time in his
presidency, but said he wouldn’t take that action again unless Congress and
European allies amended the pact.
Since then, international negotiators have unsuccessfully
sought to make changes to the deal — and Tehran has refused to accept any
alterations to its terms.
One official briefed on the decision said Trump would move
to reimpose all sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 deal, not
just the ones facing an immediate deadline.
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.
The Iran agreement, struck in 2015 by the United States,
other world powers, and Iran, lifted most US and international sanctions
against the country. In return, Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear
program making it impossible to produce a bomb, along with rigorous
inspections.
Over the last several weeks, leaders from France, Britain,
and Germany have all lobbied the president not to abscond from the accord,
while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu campaigned assiduously to discredit the
deal.
Last week, he gave a PowerPoint presentation detailing a
trove of documents the Mossad scooped that outline Iran’s covert attempts at
developing a nuclear arsenal. Trump cited the trove and said the documents
proved he was “100 percent right” in his skepticism and antipathy to the deal.
Trump has long cast the JCPOA as “worst deal ever
negotiated” and a symbol of American weakness.
Trump signaled hours before his announcement an intention to
undo the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy achievement.
Responding to recent reports that former secretary of state
John Kerry recently met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to
try and salvage the deal, Trump tweeted: “John Kerry can’t get over the fact
that he had his chance and blew it! Stay away from negotiations John, you are
hurting your country!”
Hours before the announcement, European countries met to
underline their support for the agreement. Senior officials from Britain,
France, and Germany met in Brussels with Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for
Political Affairs, Abbas Araghchi.
If the deal collapses, Iran would be free to resume
prohibited enrichment activities, while businesses and banks doing business
with Iran would have to scramble to extricate themselves or run afoul of the US
American officials, who were dusting off plans for how to sell a pullout to the
public and explain its complex financial ramifications.
In Iran, many were deeply concerned about how Trump’s
decision could affect the already struggling economy.
In Tehran earlier Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani sought
to calm nerves, smiling as he appeared at a petroleum expo. He didn’t name
Trump directly, but emphasized that Iran continued to seek “engagement with the
world.”
“It is possible that we will face some problems for two or
three months, but we will pass through this,” Rouhani said.
Members of the Obama administration who helped solidify the
international agreement told reporters before Trump’s announcement that the
consequences of blowing up the deal could be cataclysmic.
“Iran could start on its way back to getting a nuclear
weapon,” said Wendy Sherman, a former State Department official in the Obama
administration who was the chief US negotiator of the agreement. “It
raises risk of conflict in the Middle East. It could potentially put our forces
at risk everywhere. It also puts Americans being held in Iran more at risk. It
will weaken our alliances with Europe, and for that matter Russia and China,
who are important to the North Korea negotiation. This is a crisis that Trump
is precipitating himself.”
In his speech, Trump said “a constructive deal could easily
been struck at the time, but it wasn’t.” The ensuing deal was “a great
embarrassment to me as a citizen and all citizens of the United States.”
As he has in the past, he cast the deal’s sunset provisions,
which allow certain restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program to expire over
time, as unacceptable. He said Tuesday, however, that they led Iran to “the
nuclear brink” and that, “If I allowed this deal to stand, there would soon be
a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”
He further portrayed the accord as one that would lead to
Iran crossing the nuclear threshold, not one that would prevent that.
“It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear
bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” he
said. “The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing, we know
exactly what will happen.”
He also said that Iran would ultimately want to re-negotate
another deal that fully meets Trump’s demands — something Iran itself has said
it would not do. “The fact is they are going to want to make a new and lasting
deal,” Trump said.
Anthony Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state in the
Obama administration, warned this move will give hardliners in Iran an
excuse to restart their pursuit of nuclear weapons, but without a united
international coalition to oppose them, or inspectors on the ground to expose
them.” He said that meant, “we would get to the point where we would have to
live with an Iranian nuclear weapon or get into a conflict.”
He also surmised that if Iran and Europe decide to stick with
the deal, despite Trump’s refusal to renew the sanction waivers, that
will “at some point force the administration to sanction our closest
allies to stop them from doing business with Iran.”
“So we’re on a collision course in two directions,” he
added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
+++++++++++++++++++
Posts of possible interest:
o Trump
Pulls Out of Iran Deal, ‘Defective at Its Core’; By Randy
DeSoto; Western Journal; May 8, 2018 11:49am
o TEARS
IN TEHRAN: Trump Pulls US Out Of Iran Nuclear Deal; By
Saagar Enjeti; The Daily Caller; 05/08/2018 2:21 PM
Saagar Enjeti; The Daily Caller; 05/08/2018 2:21 PM
__________________________
Trump Nixes Iran Nuke Deal
John R. Houk, Blog Editor
© May 9, 2018
__________________________
Promise Kept — Trump Nukes
Iran Deal
_______________
Donald Trump Ends the
Obama Mirage
©2018 All Rights
Reserved
______________________
Defying world, Trump says
US withdrawing from Iran nuclear deal
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