{"id":39320,"date":"2018-05-16T11:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T01:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=39320"},"modified":"2018-05-30T10:50:35","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T00:50:35","slug":"trumps-war-of-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trumps-war-of-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s war of choice"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s decision<\/a> to withdraw the United States from the 2015\u00a0nuclear deal with Iran<\/a> was not his first departure from a key international agreement. From the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the Paris climate accord, tearing up multilateral frameworks has become a Trump specialty.<\/p>\n

But even by Trump\u2019s standards, exiting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the Iran deal is formally known, is a bridge too far. The move is already being compared to President George W. Bush\u2019s ill-fated attempt to reshape the Middle East<\/a> through wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Like Bush\u2019s military misadventures, Trump\u2019s approach to the region carries enormous risks, not least because it has buried whatever was left of the transatlantic alliance in the chasm separating America\u2019s power politics and Europe\u2019s emphasis on diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s move is not just about curbing Iran\u2019s weapons of mass destruction. Rather, his objective is regime change, something he apparently hopes to achieve by draining the Islamic Republic\u2019s economic and strategic resources. By reinstating sanctions, Trump is all but begging the Iranian people\u2014who will bear the brunt of the sanctions\u2019 pain\u2014to rise up against their government.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s abrogation of the JCPOA has left Iran with two options, neither of them good. The first is to renegotiate the agreement with the remaining signatories\u2014China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has already hinted at this possibility<\/a>, but his ability to deliver could be limited when sanctions return. Forced to choose, European companies would sacrifice business in Iran to maintain access to the American market. And, as Iran\u2019s economy falters, Iranians will seek to apportion blame<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The second option is no better. Iran\u2019s reformists could capitulate to hardliners<\/a>, scrap the JCPOA altogether, resume nuclear activities and accelerate the country\u2019s ballistic missile program. This would all but guarantee that Israel would launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran\u2019s nuclear installations\u2014with America\u2019s blessing, if not complicity. At that point, Iran would feel free to redeploy its proxies against Israel, starting with Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon. And this could lead to a broader conflagration involving other US\u00a0allies in the region, including the Saudis and other Sunni Arab powers.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the outcome to avoid is the very one that Israel\u2019s leadership seems keen to bring about<\/a>. Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accused Iran of cheating on the nuclear deal. At the time, Netanyahu\u2019s bizarre presentation\u2014in English, no less\u2014met with derision in the West<\/a>. Now it looks like a prelude.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Netanyahu\u2013Trump tag team\u2014which is largely responsible for the scuttling of the nuclear deal\u2014is an explosive alliance of two narcissists who have allowed dysfunctional domestic politics to dictate their international behaviour. In Trump\u2019s case, the goal seems to be systematic deconstruction of President Barack Obama\u2019s legacy, for no other reason than to be true to his electoral campaign (which, in a sense, has never ended).<\/p>\n

Netanyahu, meanwhile, is enamoured of his carefully honed image as the saviour of the Jewish people from a second Holocaust. With his own political fortunes clouded by legal troubles that could lead to his indictment, warmongering has become a strategy to win re-election. In fact, support for Trump in Israel reached a record high after his decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, and following Israel\u2019s massive military strike against Iranian targets in Syria. Netanyahu\u2019s tactics also conveniently distract international attention from the Palestinian problem, which is coming to a head again.<\/p>\n

Israel has the strongest military in the Middle East, but Netanyahu must not be allowed to use it for his own political gain. Israel last fought an interstate war in\u00a01973, and the trauma of that fight still lingers. Moreover, military strength alone has done little to safeguard the country\u2019s borders. The \u2018Begin Doctrine\u2019, Israel\u2019s preventive-strike strategy for maintaining a regional monopoly on nuclear weapons, has not led to fewer rocket attacks from Israel\u2019s Iranian-backed foes.<\/p>\n

Only robust international diplomacy can halt the Middle East\u2019s slide toward nuclear proliferation. Even without the\u00a0US, the JCPOA\u2019s remaining signatories can salvage the agreement\u2019s central tenets by supporting Iran\u2019s moderate leaders in mitigating the effects of new sanctions. The deal\u2019s remaining supporters can also help defuse the crisis on Israel\u2019s northern border, where Israeli and Iranian forces are already engaging each other directly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In order to reach a new deal that ensures Iran\u2019s continued denuclearisation, puts its ballistic missile program under surveillance and encourages a less hostile foreign policy, both sanctions and regime change must be taken off the table. Trump will most likely hear the same message from his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong\u2011un, ahead of the two leaders\u2019 planned summit in June.<\/p>\n

The irony, of course, is that this is exactly the type of \u2018grand bargain<\/a>\u2018 Iran proposed to the Bush administration in May\u00a02003. Bush rejected the offer, vowing never to talk with a member of the \u2018axis of evil.\u2019 As Vice President Dick Cheney put it<\/a> in reference to North Korea\u2014another member of that fanciful \u2018axis\u2019\u2014Americans \u2018don\u2019t negotiate with evil; we defeat it\u2019.<\/p>\n

But by trading diplomacy for sabre-rattling, the Bush administration slammed the door on a solution with Iran. Today, as Trump embraces the same tactics, it\u2019s hard to fathom how the outcome will be any different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015\u00a0nuclear deal with Iran was not his first departure from a key international agreement. From the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the Paris climate accord, tearing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":39321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1428,1539,247,240,31],"class_list":["post-39320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-donald-trump","tag-george-w-bush","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-united-states","dinkus-us-withdrawal-from-jcpoa"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTrump\u2019s war of choice | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trumps-war-of-choice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump\u2019s war of choice | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015\u00a0nuclear deal with Iran was not his first departure from a key international agreement. 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