The Iran deal

[Millhouse]

(05-08-2018, 06:31 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: What baffles me about this is that the Iran deal was working and they had stopped their nuclear weapons program. If they do not reach a new deal with the other signatories, then they will start their program back up. So pulling out of the deal has caused the thing that the deal was preventing, but also what Trump says he doesn't want to happen.

And while this does things to our overall image, that ship sailed with this administration. The diplomatic corps have been so depleted that they have been having a tough go of it. This really doesn't do much either way and that is repairable with a new administration, we just have to hope someone with better sense gets into office.

The real damage, other than Iran likely restarting their nuclear program and giving the religious leaders more ability to foment anti-American sentiment and entrench their power further, is that it weakens Trump's bargaining position in the meeting with North Korea. Kim can go into that meeting saying "why should I trust the US? Look what happened to Iran. None of the other signatories say they were violating the arrangement, but you did and pulled out of it. So why should we trust anything you say?" That's the damage here. It is some terrible timing.

To play devil's advocate, the deal was only going to last until 2031, which is only 13 more years. In the meantime they would have avoided sanctions which would give them a more sizable income to develop ballistic technology than they currently have. They also would have more money to support Assad in Syria, among other anti-American/Israel/Saudi factions in the region.

As I said though, we shouldn't have pulled out of it yet. Just trying to find a silver lining in it though, because ultimately that deal was nothing more than a temporary bandaid on keeping them from having nukes over a 15 year period, and not a long term solution that a treaty could have provided instead.