Trump, Iran, and Saudi Arabia
So let’s get this straight.
In 2015, President Barack Obama brokered a far-reaching and historic nuclear deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan for Action (JCPOA). The JCPOA was a multilateral arms control agreement, reached between the European Union, the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran. Iran had removed 13,000 of its centrifuges (over two-thirds) and eliminated more than 95% of its enriched uranium stockpile, and placed it all under a meticulous verification system with strict international monitoring. And it was working. The US intelligence agencies all affirmed Iranian compliance, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency and US partners to the deal. Even as some of the JCPOA restrictions become less strict (over a 10 to 25 year period of time), as President Obama put it, “The prohibition on Iran ever obtaining a nuclear weapon is permanent.”
Then in 2018, President Donald Trump, jealous of anything Obama, withdrew from the JCPOA, promising something much more advantageous to the United States.
President Joe Biden sought to jump-start the JCPOA process again, but it stalled due Iranian distrust of US presidential administration exigencies – what happens after the Biden presidency, what would the next US president decide.
And sure enough, right on schedule, in a most classic tail-wagging-the-dog, Trump 2.0 was manipulated (threatened and blackmailed?) by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to wage a reckless and misguided war (believing Bibi that Iran certainly wouldn’t close the Strait of Hormuz, would they?) proxy war on Iran on Israel’s behalf, hardly in the US interest, now going on almost five months with no end in sight. And naturally, from the US president, indiscriminate bombing, macho bluster, disinformation, backtracking, deal-no deal announcements – a foreign policy based upon the personal, emotional insecurity of the president and his need for psychological validation of his manhood.
The US proxy war on Iran for Israel to provide cover so Israel can bomb and occupy Lebanon and continue its genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. And today, “over 4,000 illegal Israeli settlers accompanied convicted terrorist and Israel National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and desecrated the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’av. Palestinian worshipers reported being beaten by Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) mid-prayer. As settlers desecrated Al-Aqsa grounds and prayed, Ben Gvir told the press, ‘We are seeing tremendous progress on the Temple Mount. Look at what’s happening here. Jews are praying and feel they are owners of this place. This has never happened before.’” (as reported by American Muslims for Palestine)
Then to top it off, in the last couple of days, we hear of the US signing an ill-advised 30-year nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, promising them material assistance in enriching their own uranium and further developing their nuclear program. Short-sighted because it shows an ignorance of Saudi-Iran, Sunni-Shia distrust, at best, and hostility, at worst, at least since the 1979 Iranian revolution, so it will only encourage, embolden Iran’s desire to develop its nuclear program. This is not even to mention that it will motivate Egypt, Turkey, and others in the region to ask why they shouldn’t develop their own nuclear capabilities, thereby making Middle East politics even more unstable as a potential nuclear tinderbox.
Now to be clear, as a party of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Saudi Arabia has the “the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.” But so does Iran, itself a party to the Treaty.
One wonders the motivation of the US president in waging Israel’s proxy war against Iran, and his just plain dumb nuclear enrichment deal with Saudi Arabia, especially at this dangerous time of war against Saudi’s enemy, knowing the ill-fated consequences. You have to wonder: Could it be that he is somehow being threatened and blackmailed by Israel to do its bidding? Part of it must certainly be enriching the US nuclear industry to the tune of billions of dollars. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the Trump family had its fingers in the pot enriching themselves as well, right?
In the year and a half of this president’s tenure, he has carved out a path of fear, hatred, death and destruction on the grounds of the White House, in Washington DC, and throughout the country. And around the world, he has alienated allies (I mean, who picks a fight against Canada, Greenland, and the EU) and in the Middle East, done nothing but ratchet up tensions, wreaked death and destruction there, too (just one example, bombing a girls’ school in southern Iran – that will show them!), and make the geopolitics of the region more unstable, even undermining the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thereby making the entire world less safe.