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The Mask Is
Off: Trump Is Seeking War with Iran
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.
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.
About Author
Dr. Trita Parsi is the founder
and president of the National Iranian American Council and an expert on
US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign politics, and the geopolitics of the
Middle East. Parsi is the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas
Improving World Order. He is an award-wining author of two books, Treacherous
Alliance - The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US (Yale University
Press, 2007) and A Single Roll of the Dice - Obama's Diplomacy with Iran (Yale
University Press, 2012). Treacherous Alliance won the Council of Foreign
Relations Arthur Ross Award in 2008 (Silver medallion). A Single Roll of the
Dice was selected as The Best Book on The Middle East in 2012 by Foreign
Affairs. Parsi currently teaches at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He tweets at @tparsi.
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