Iran nuclear deal has been a bird in the hand

It is generally agreed that a bird in the hand is worth two (or three, or more) in the bush. US President Donald Trump, however, does not see it that way.

It has been a busy week in Washington as, first, French President Emmanuel Macron and then German Chancellor Angela Merkel dropped in to try to persuade Trump not to pull out of the 2015 deal that prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons for the next 10 years. They failed.

As Macron said: “My view is that [Trump] will get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons.” The response of America’s three most important allies has been to break decisively with the US on the issue: on Sunday, Macron and Merkel joined with British Prime Minister Theresa May in declaring that the Iran nuclear deal is “the best way of neutralising the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran”.

A nuclear-armed Iran would certainly pose no threat to any of the six countries that signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 deal that put Iran’s nuclear weapons programme on hold. The US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China all have far more nuclear weapons than Iran would ever possess. Deterrence still works.

So why did they bother? Probably because they prefer an Israeli monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East. They don’t all love Israel but if more countries in the region had nukes, the Middle East’s endless wars might one day lead to a local nuclear exchange.

So, there was general support on the United Nations Security Council for stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons and UN sanctions were placed on Iran from 2006 onwards. The deal that was signed in 2015 ended all UN sanctions and the severe US sanctions, which targeted Iranian banks and oil exports.

Unfortunately, Iran remained excluded from the world banking system because banks feared the reimposition of the sanctions, so much of the economic relief Iran expected from the end of sanctions never arrived. There is therefore growing hostility in Iran to the JCPOA deal. But why is it even stronger in the White House?

Trump talks about Iran “cheating” on the deal. (International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have certified 11 times since 2016 that Iran is meeting its obligations.)

He calls the deal “insane”, complaining that it imposed only a 10-year ban on Iran’s nuclear activities, did not stop the country from testing missiles and did not stop it from interfering in other countries. “They should have made a deal that covered Yemen, Syria and other parts of the Middle East,” he said.

These are birds in the bush and they were never within reach. It took two years of negotiation just to get a deal for 10 years. The deal accepted by Barack Obama in 2015 was realistic; Trump’s preferred substitute is pure fantasy.

What drives Trump’s hatred of the deal, in all likelihood, is the fact that it was one of Obama’s major successes. It fits a pattern: Trump’s cancellation of the transpacific trade deal, the US withdrawal from the climate pact and the unsuccessful assault on healthcare (Obamacare).

So Trump will repudiate the Iran deal on May 12. It will probably then die. And in Pyongyang, Kim Jong-un will draw his conclusions about the reliability of the US as a negotiating partner.

Gwynne Dyer.

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