Because as President he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal it is now a threshold state. If an Iranian dirty bomb detonates somewhere, it is on Trump.
Many are the reasons to spare Americans and the world another Donald Trump presidency: among them are of course his status as a criminal defendant, his divisiveness, toxicity, boorish ignorance, and his 2020 election-overturning effort and complicity in the Jan. 6 abomination. But Trump’s colossal miscalculation on Iran may be the greatest of them all—because it is in the realm of foreign policy that idiocy can most easily beget the End of Days.
As we know, Iran has been governed for over four decades by a cabal of religious fanatics who impose a barbaric form of Islam upon their people while menacing the Middle East and world at large. Their contributions to the record of human exertions have ranged from „fatwas” against novelists to executions of gay people to fomenting mayhem from Lebanon to Yemen to Gaza.
The idea that this benighted regime should not have nuclear weapons unites the nations of the world as few others do, and it is obvious why: Deterrence relies on rational actors, while religious mania might make adherents, like the Iranian mullahs, unpredictable.
In recent days it is becoming clear that this important global project—denying Iran nuclear weapons—is very close to failure.
According to recent weeks’ reports, Iran is close to 90 percent weapons grade uranium enrichment. The most IAEA report estimated that as of May 13, Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile was at 4,744.5 kilograms (10,460 pounds) including a great amount enriched up to 60 percent purity, a short, technical step to weapons-grade levels. The IAEA recently found that Iran has significantly increased its stockpile of enriched uranium, reaching more than 23 times the limit set out in the agreement with world powers that Trump cancelled.
The last IAEA estimate in February put Iran’s uranium stockpile at some 3,760 kilograms of which 87.5 kilograms was enriched up to 60 percent purity. Some assess this is already enough for a nuclear bomb—and Israel is in an uproar.
Experts agree this makes it Iran’s choice whether to move to weapons grade enrichment with speed and impunity. It’s quite clear that Iran may go the same way as North Korea—a rogue nuclear nation.
The reason for that is Trump. If Israel is hit with a nuclear attack, it’s on Trump. If a dirty bomb stemming from Iran hits Brussels, it is down to Trump. If Washington is incinerated because Iran slipped terrorists a weapon, thank Trump.
That’s because in 2018, then-President Trump decided to pull the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, reached three years earlier between Iran and the U.S., China, France, Russia, the U.K. and Germany.
Under that agreement, Iran agreed to cease enriching uranium to levels near weapons-grade, eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium and most of its centrifuges, and cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98 percent. It agreed to only enrich uranium to harmless levels, not build heavy-water reactors, and submit to monitoring by the IAEA. In exchange, nuclear-related sanctions were to end for 10 years.
This was not an ideal deal. It did allow Iran to build long-range missiles and it in no way addressed Iran’s support of terrorists. It did not address Iran’s regime of terror at home; indeed, by ending most economic sanctions it may have strengthened the regime, so the main victims are, in a way, Iran’s own citizens.
But the deal did mean Iran would not possess a nuclear weapon. At the time of Trump’s decision, the IAEA was reporting that Iran was honoring its commitments—meaning it was very far from a bomb.
Pretty much every expert on the planet—including anyone worth listening to in the Israeli security establishment—advised against pulling out of the deal if the main goal is the prevention of a nuclear Iran. But the clueless band of disruptors known as the global populist right is not impressed by that. As the pro-Brexit UK politician Michael Gove famously said of economists who correctly warned that leaving the European Union would harm the British economy, „the people have had enough of experts.”
Yet the experts were right about Brexit, and spot-on about Iran. After the decision, Iran gradually ended its compliance and ramped down cooperation with IAEA inspections. It no longer had the same incentives and disincentives. Lacking leverage, the West looking on helplessly, leading us to the present-day calamity.
Trump — who over the weekend was busy dismissing the dozens of counts against him as a witch hunt — argued at the time that sanctions on Iran would bring the regime to its knees. Indeed, riots broke out across the country last year—but the regime very much still stands. The world’s leverage against Iran does not; Trump plainly did not have the stomach for war with Iran—and neither does his successor.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin-loving U.S, president was egged onto this disastrous path by his good friend and fellow criminal defendant Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister currently facing weekly mass protests over his effort to Putinize his own country.
For the cynical Netanyahu, bashing Iran was a politically useful ploy. He is undoubtedly too smart to believe the argument he put forth: that because the Iran deal had a timeframe this meant that upon expiration Iran was „allowed” to proceed to build a bomb. This argument would mean that because a rental agreement is limited in time, after that it’s OK to squat in the property.
Trump’s is a mind that went from imposing tariffs on Chinese imports without understanding Americans would be footing the bill to praising Xi Jinping for his power grab in abolishing term limits in China (Trump: „Maybe we’ll give that a shot”) to asking for his help in winning the 2020 election.
It is hard to overstate the damage Trump did in pulling out of the Iran deal.
Beyond bringing us to the cusp of a nuclear Iran, he savaged the U.S. brand, transforming America into a country that cannot be assumed to honor its commitments. The cost of that brand damage is incalculable.
At this point, eliminating the nuclear program by force seems unlikely. A major Israeli attack on Iran would risk a devastating counterstrike that would cost innumerable lives and quite possibly spark a wider war.
All of this was perfectly predictable.
If the Iran deal was bad, it was mainly bad for the Iranian people. The fundamental transaction was that the world community would not undermine Iran’s odious regime in exchange for nuclear compliance.
I can see opposing that deal out of a sense of duty to the Iranian people—an ancient civilization that deserves way better. But that, of course, was not the argument. Trump’s goal was to prevent a nuclear Iran, and he brought about the opposite.
Can America afford another four years of President Trump? It’s pretty clear that the answer is no, it most definitely cannot.
