Paul R. Pillar, in his 28
years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top
analysts. He is author most recently of Why America
Misunderstands the World. (Reprinted with author’s permission.)
Trump appears to care little about the resulting
near-term consequence of U.S. isolation and loss of leadership. The most
cataclysmic physical and economic consequences are longer-term ones that will
mostly occur after Trump leaves office, and there is no evidence that he cares
about those consequences at all.
As for what was probably Barack Obama’s leading
foreign policy accomplishment — the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA), to restrict Iran’s nuclear program — the reality that
Trump rejects is that the accord is working as intended to prevent an Iranian
nuclear weapon and that Iran is complying with its obligations under the
agreement, as verified by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Trump faces every 90 days a congressionally imposed
requirement for the president to certify whether Iran is observing the
agreement. The certification is supposed to be a statement of fact, not an
expression of a preference. For Trump, who has been
vituperative in denouncing the agreement, this requirement is a problem.
The account in
the New York Times of White House discussions leading to the
most recent certification of Iranian compliance (the second of Trump’s
presidency) indicates that Trump’s advisers had to drag him kicking and
screaming into making the certification.
Tearing Down Obama
Notwithstanding (or perhaps because of) the JCPOA’s
success, Trump clearly is still determined to try to destroy the
accord. With his failure on the domestic side to undo Obamacare, he is
probably more determined than ever to achieve destruction of this foreign policy
accomplishment.
The Times’s account leaves the
impression that when the next certification is due three months from now, there
is a significant chance that Trump will refuse to acknowledge the truth a third
time, no matter how rigorously the Iranians observe the agreement. A
failure to certify would open the door to new sanctions that would represent
wholesale U.S. violation of the JCPOA.
Meanwhile, the Trump White House already has
violated not only the spirit but the letter of the JCPOA by openly and
explicitly discouraging other countries, as it did at the G-20 summit meeting,
from conducting normal business with Iran. The Iranians have not yet given
up on the agreement in response, but as Iranian
foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has indicated, Iran’s
patience, like anyone’s patience, is not unlimited.
For Trump and others who want to confront and
isolate Iran and who all along have opposed the JCPOA or anything like it, the
preferred scenario is for the Iranians to get so annoyed by U.S. noncompliance
that Tehran finally does give up and declares the agreement void.
If that tactic fails, then do not be surprised if,
in October, Trump refuses certification. That decision would be
accompanied by trumped-up charges of Iranian violations. Anyone willing to
examine the issue carefully would know they are trumped-up because, thanks to
the highly intrusive monitoring regime that the JCPOA established,
international inspectors have very detailed and timely cognizance of everything
going on in the Iranian nuclear program.
If Iranian conduct
regarding the JCPOA to date continues over the next three months, then the
world should realize that a Trumpian accusation of Iranian noncompliance would not have much validity.
If Trump rejects the truth about Iranian compliance,
the most favorable possible outcome would be for Iran and the other five
non-U.S. powers that negotiated the JCPOA to try to continue the agreement
despite U.S. noncompliance. Even that outcome would have significant
negative consequences for the United States in the form of lost business in
Iran, lost opportunities to build on the JCPOA in addressing other regional
problems, and further isolation of the United States and estrangement from its
allies.
Less favorable outcomes would involve complete breakdown
of the JCPOA and an accelerated Iranian nuclear program, with renewed concern
about diminishing breakout time until a possible Iranian nuclear weapon,
increased uncertainty about the Iranian program in the absence of the enhanced
international inspections established under the JCPOA, and heightened danger of
U.S. involvement in a new Middle Eastern war.
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