The
Mask Is Off: Trump Is Seeking War with Iran
By
Trita Parsi
July
29, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Something extraordinary has happened in
Washington. President Donald Trump has made it
clear, in no uncertain terms and with no effort
to disguise his duplicity, that he will claim
that Tehran is cheating on the nuclear deal by
October—the facts be damned. In short, the fix
is in. Trump will refuse to accept that Iran is
in compliance and thereby set the stage for a
military confrontation. His advisors have even
been kind enough to explain how they will go
about this. Rarely has a sinister plan to
destroy an arms control agreement and pave the
way for war been so openly telegraphed.
The unmasking of Trump’s plans to sabotage the
nuclear deal began two weeks ago when he
reluctantly had to certify that Iran indeed was
in compliance. Both the US intelligence as well
as the International Atomic Energy Agency had
confirmed Tehran’s fair play. But Trump threw a
tantrum in the Oval Office and berated his
national security team for not having found a
way to claim Iran was cheating. According to
Foreign Policy,
the adults in the room—Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and
National Security Advisor H. R.
McMaster—eventually calmed Trump down but only
on the condition that they double down on
finding a way for the president to blow up the
deal by October.
Prior
to the revelation of Trump’s Iran certification
meltdown, most analysts and diplomats believed
that Trump’s rhetoric on Iran was just
that—empty talk. His bark was worse than his
bite, as demonstrated when he certified Iran’s
compliance back in April and when he renewed
sanctions waivers in May. The distance between
his rhetoric and actual policy was tangible.
Rhetorically, Trump officials described Iran as
the root of all problems in the Middle East and
as the greatest state sponsor of terror. Trump
even suggested he might quit the deal.
In
action, however, President Trump continued to
waive sanctions and admitted that Iran was
adhering to the deal. As a result, many
concluded that Trump would continue to fulfill
the obligations of the deal while sticking to
his harsh rhetoric in order to appease domestic
opponents of the nuclear deal—as well as Trump’s
allies in Saudi Arabia and Israel.
But
now, assessments are changing. The tangible
danger of Trump’s malice on the Iran deal—as
well as the danger of the advice of the “adults
in the room”—became further clarified this week
as tidbits of the reality TV star’s plans began
to leak.
How to
Wreck a Deal
Recognizing that refusing to certify Iran would
isolate the United States, Trump’s advisors gave
him another plan. Use the spot-inspections
mechanism of the nuclear deal, they suggested,
to demand access to a whole set of military
sites in Iran. Once Iran balks—which it will
since the mechanism is only supposed to be used
if tangible evidence exists that those sites are
being used for illicit nuclear activities—Trump
can claim that Iran is in violation, blowing up
the nuclear deal while shifting the blame to
Tehran.
Thus,
the advice of the adults in the room—those who
we are supposed to restrain Trump—was not to
keep the highly successful nuclear deal that has
taken both an Iranian bomb and war with Iran off
the table. Rather, they recommended killing it
in a manner that would conceal Trump’s malice
and shift the cost to Iran.
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According to
The New York Times,
the groundwork for this strategy has already
been laid. Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob
Corker (R-TN) calls this strategy “radical
enforcement” of the deal. “If they don’t let us
in,” Corker told The Washington Post,
“boom.” Then he added: “You want the breakup of
this deal to be about Iran. You don’t want it to
be about the U.S., because we want our allies
with us.”
This is a charade, a rerun of the machinations
that resulted in the Iraq war. It doesn’t matter
what Iran does or doesn’t do. If it were up to
Trump, he’d never have accepted that Iran was in
compliance in the first place. He admitted as
much to the
Wall Street Journal.
“If it was up to me, I would have had them [the
Iranians] non-compliant 180 days ago.”
Sounding supremely confident of the “radical
implementation” strategy, Trump added that “I
think they’ll be noncompliant [in October].” In
so doing, he further confirmed doubts that the
process is about determining whether Iran is in
compliance or not. The administration is
committed to finding a way to claim Iran has
violated the accord, regardless of the
facts—just as George W. Bush did with Iraq.
Potential
for Backfire
But
Trump’s confidence may be misplaced on two
levels. First, abusing the inspection mechanisms
of the deal may prove harder than Trump has been
led to believe. The inspections are the
cornerstone of the deal, and Iran’s ability to
cheat on the deal is essentially non-existent as
long as the integrity and efficiency of the
inspections remain in tact. But if Trump begins
to abuse the mechanism to fabricate a conflict,
he will end up undermining the inspections
regime and actually enhance the ability of those
in Iran who would like to pursue a covert
nuclear program. Precisely because of the
commitment of Europe and others to
non-proliferation, they are likely to resist
Trump’s efforts to tinker with the inspections.
Second,
by revealing his hand, Trump has displayed his
duplicity for all to see. That includes the
American public, whose anti-war sentiments
remain strong and are a key reason they
supported the nuclear deal in the first place.
The
American public knows the Iraq playbook quite
well. Trump’s own supporters remain enraged by
the disastrous war with Iraq. They know how they
got played. It’s difficult to imagine why they
would allow themselves to get played again by a
president who has left little doubt about his
intent to deceive.
Trita Parsi is the president of the
National
Iranian American Council
and author of
Losing an Enemy – Obama, Iran and
the Triumph of Diplomacy.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
