By THE EDITORS
Presidential candidate Donald Trump disparaged the Obama
administration’s nuclear deal with Iran in characteristically superlative
terms: “My number-one priority,” he said to the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee in March 2016, “is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have
been in business a long time. I know deal-making, and let me tell you, this
deal is catastrophic—for America, for Israel, and for the whole Middle East. .
. . We have rewarded the world’s leading state sponsor of terror with $150
billion, and we received absolutely nothing in return.”
We didn’t disagree with Trump’s reasoning then, and we
don’t now. This magazine has been sharply critical of much the president has
done, but on two vital questions—Iran and North Korea—we believe his instincts
are sound. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, negotiated by the
Obama administration and signed in 2015, took pressure off one of the world’s
most aggressive sponsors of terrorism in exchange for empty promises not to
pursue its aim of building a nuclear weapon. The deal was, indeed,
catastrophic.
Congress never ratified it, but lawmakers did codify some
oversight. The 2015 Corker-Cardin act requires the president to “certify”
Iran’s compliance with the terms of the deal every 90 days. When certifying the
deal, the president must avow four points: that Iran is “transparently,
verifiably, and fully” implementing the agreement; that Iran “has not committed
a material breach with respect to the agreement”; that it’s taken no action,
“including covert activities, that could significantly advance its nuclear
weapons program”; and that continuing to suspend sanctions is in the U.S.
national interest.
It is unassailably obvious that the Iranian regime has
not complied with the agreement. The Iranians have not given international
inspectors unfettered access to nuclear and military facilities, as the
agreement requires. They have attempted to acquire banned nuclear and missile
technology. They have exceeded the agreement’s limits on advanced centrifuges
and heavy-water production. They continue, moreover, to sponsor terrorism
around the world and abet the brutalities of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
Trump made the decision to certify Iran’s compliance in
July, by all accounts against his instincts, having been talked into it by some
of his closest advisers, as Stephen F. Hayes and Michael Warren show elsewhere
in these pages. Three months ago the administration squared the circle by
declaring the Iranians to be in “technical compliance” with the agreement but
“in default of the spirit”—a reasonable ploy to buy time while the
administration figured out what to do next.
How the months flew by! The problem is here again—the
deadline is October 15—and the president by all reports is leaning toward
refusing to certify compliance.
That will bring its own set of problems, to be sure.
Congress would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose the sanctions lifted
when the JCPOA came into force. Trump’s national security advisers appear to
have no illusions about Iran and reject Obama’s woefully misguided notion of a
U.S.-Iran partnership for Middle East security. They also know that the Iran
deal is a fact. The danger of walking away from the agreement is not that Iran
will feel emboldened to continue pursuing its nuclear program and exporting
terror—it’s already doing both. The danger, as Reuel Marc Gerecht explains
elsewhere in these pages, is that Iran will more aggressively undermine
American interests in the region at a time when the United States is already in
retreat from it. President Trump hasn’t given any indication of having a
strategic vision for the Middle East. That, we assume, is why Secretary of
Defense James Mattis told a Senate committee on October 3 that he thought preserving
the agreement was in America’s interest.
Maybe. But the administration’s credibility is at stake.
The president has said, repeatedly and in strident terms, that the JCPOA is a
bad deal for the United States. If Trump once again gives his blessing to an
agreement he believes to be “disastrous” and “catastrophic,” the Iranians will
draw the wholly valid conclusion that the 45th president is as weak and naïve
as the 44th. So will rogue regimes and terrorist organizations around the
world.
Some reports suggest that Trump may refuse to certify the
deal, as we urge him to do. But that’s more than a matter of not signing a
document. It will take resolve. It will require imposing a new program of
executive-branch sanctions on the regime and particularly on its Revolutionary
Guard Corps, and it will require a substantially increased level of commitment
and vigilance on the part of the U.S. military.
Iran’s ruling elite are increasingly restive because the
2015 nuclear deal, though it eased some sanctions in return for minimal
alterations in the regime’s behavior, has not resulted in the high levels of
foreign investment they hoped for. They need money. The credible threat of new
and tough sanctions, together with more deliberate engagement in Syria and Iraq,
may bring the country’s clerical rulers to a more compliant state of mind.
Trump has the right instincts on Iran. We hope he also
has resolve.
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