Thursday, April 20, 2017

Interesting Trump Administration Announcement about Iran

Without fanfare, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan certifying that Iran is complying with the terms of the nuclear deal.

Trump and many other Republicans have denounced the deal as little short of  treason, but in power they are finding that they have to live with it. The sanctions on Iran only worked because they were supported by Europe, China and Japan, and none of those countries would put their sanctions back in place unless definitive evidence emerged of Iranian cheating. So until the Iranians do something flagrant on the nuclear front, the US has little choice but to stick with the deal. Which anyway seems to be working, in the sense that it makes it much harder for Iran to accumulate enriched uranium.

Of course we have lots of other issues with Iran – Syria, Yemen, terrorism, anti-Israel rhetoric – so the political conflict will go on, and the chance of a shooting war remains. But the situation is much less dangerous than before the Obama administration's deal was made.

1 comment:

G. Verloren said...

Every single nuclear weapons expert in the world agreed that this deal was the best possible outcome, given the way the cards lay on the table.

The only people who opposed it were those who were too ignorant to understand it properly, or too stubborn to compromise their predefined political expectations.