JOIN USTrump targets Iran again, faces ire
During the presidential election campaign, Donald Trump pledged to “tear up” the six-nation accord reached with Iran to dismantle its nuclear programme in exchange for lifting punitive economic sanctions.
Since taking office, Trump been compelled to rule that Iran is in compliance. Nevertheless, he is threatening to “blow up” the landmark deal, signed in 2015, and ordered aides to formulate a strategy to achieve this end. Trump and his minions will, however, have to ignore the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which has consistently reported Iran is honouring its obligations.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defence Secretary James Mattis and National Security advisor H R McMaster promptly proposed demanding access for IAEA inspectors to sensitive military sites on the pretext that Iran could be engaging in banned nuclear activities although there is no evidence of this.
Such inspections would be in addition to the intrusive monitoring arrangements specified in the accord and could prompt Tehran, forewarned of the Trump plot, to reject such intrusions. Iran has correctly argued that Washington is violating the spirit of the accord by imposing sanctions unrelated to the nuclear deal and threatening to fine banks and firms that do business with Iran, reducing the benefits of the easing of sanctions that came with implementation of the deal.
Trump is certain he enjoys the support of these three subordinates. Tillerson has called for “regime change” in Iran. Retired Marine General Mattis hates Tehran as Iranian troops trained Lebanese suicide bombers who blew up the US marine barracks south of Beirut in 1983, killing 241 US troops, 220 of them marines.
Gen McMaster is an active duty army officer who served in the 1991 and 2003 US wars on Iraq and in the Afghan conflict. Trump also counts on Congress where both Republicans and Democrats, urged on by the powerful Israel lobby, seek to confront Iran, perhaps militarily, in the vain hope of effecting regime change or curbing Iran’s growing influence in West Asia.
It is ironic that US actions and policies have enabled the Shia Iranian phoenix to rise and spr-
ead its wings. The 1953 US coup against Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh and the return to power of the Shah, a US ally, set the stage for his 1979 overthrow by mass protests and establishment of the clerical regime.
The Reagan administration supported Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon during which Iranian Revolutionary Guards trained Lebanese Shias to resist Israel, resulting in the creation of Hizbollah, the movement that drove Israeli troops and surrogates from south Lebanon in 2000. Since then, Hizbollah has successfully countered Israel and joined Syria’s war against insurgents, some of them US trained and armed.
The Bush administration’s conquest of Iraq and its handing over to a Shia fundamentalist regime allied to Iran has given Tehran a decisive voice in Baghdad while Iranian-sponsored Shia militias are in the forefront of the campaign against Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria. Finally, Iran has, reluctantly, been drawn into supporting Shia rebels in Yemen during the US-backed Sunni Saudi-led campaign to crush the uprising.
While Trump may have the support of his “generals” and both Houses of Congress for his plot to detonate the Iran nuclear accord, he is certain to face opposition from the UN, the IAEA, the other five signatories of the deal: Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany as well as India and other customers for Iran’s oil that have benefitted from sanctions relief. Firms in the US and elsewhere seeking to invest in Iran are chafing under sanctions and are likely to exert pressure on the Trump administration to ease up on Iran.
Alienating allies
Determined to alienate potential allies, Trump has antagonised France and Germany by declaring that the US will exit the Paris climate agreement, imposing fresh sanctions on Russia, and accusing China of unfair trade policies.
Nevertheless, there is serious concern in Washington that Trump’s neophyte team, ill-equipped to understand or deal with international crises, will not discourage him from trying to scuttle the nuclear deal. His lack of a legislative triumph, a foreign policy success, and low domestic popularity could very well drive him to folly.
Revoking the Iran nuclear deal would boost anti-US hardliners in Tehran who have been fighting the liberal policies of moderate President Hassan Rouhani and return Iran to isolation adopted during the early years of the revolution. Iran could also follow the example of Iraq which only launched a programme to make nuclear weapons after Israel bombed Baghdad’s small French-supplied research reactor in 1981.
Iraq cancelled efforts to build “the bomb” after the 1991 US-led war on that country. The second Bush administration used the threat of Iraq’s non-existent nuclear weaponry as a pretext to wage the 2003 war. Tehran halted the military aspect of its nuclear programme that year, fearing US attack and once it had become clear Iraq no longer posed a threat to Iran.
However, challenged by the US, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, Iran could resume clandestine efforts to manufacture nuclear warheads and the missiles to deter and punish aggressors.