Tag: John Kerry

VIDEO: Trump Announces U.S. Withdrawal From Iran Nuclear Deal

Posted by Washington Free Beacon

Published on May 8, 2018

John R. Houk, Blog Editor

© May 9, 2018

Yesterday President Trump did a magnificent thing. He ended former President Obama’s (the next Benedict Arnold at worst or Aaron Burr at best) so-called Iran Nuke Deal that only delayed a nuclear armed Iran. Obama’s lie: the deal prevented a nuclear armed Iran.

Traitors: Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr & Obama

President Trump’s election mandate from my perspective is to unravel all the damning acts Obama’s designs to fundamentally transform America into a State supremacist Socialist nation where the People are told how to think rather than the People telling the government how to act.

Stopping to put trust in Iran’s criminal Islamofascist Shi’ite ruling elite is not only a great thing for American National Interests, but also for the people of Western Nations that have benefitted from actual free elections deciding their national path.

ONE THING to keep in mind: The Iran Nuke Deal was NOT a treaty ratified by the Senate. Obama chose to circumvent the Constitution (as he had done so many times) and sign an agreement with Iran as an Executive Order. An EO is easily undone by the next President’s EO action. Thank you President Trump.

Below are a series of articles about President Donald Trump’s decision with a few titles that may be of interest.

JRH 5/9/18

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Promise Kept — Trump Nukes Iran Deal

Yet another pillar of Barack Obama’s horrible legacy crumbles at Trump’s hands.

By National Security Desk

May 9, 2018

The Patriot Post

Trump Caption: I Undid his (BHO) deal & Legacy. Patriot Post

Keeping his promise, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will withdraw from the “horrible” Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and reinstate sanctions that were suspended as part of the deal. “We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America’ to gain access to the most deadly weapons on earth,” Trump declared. “Today’s action sends a critical message: The United States no longer makes empty threats. When I make promises I keep them.”

Despite attempts by the Europeans to dissuade Trump, despite John Kerry’s smoke-filled-backroom efforts to save the deal, and despite Iran warning that it would be “a historic mistake” to withdraw, the president reiterated what he has said all along: “We cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement.” Trump reportedly remains open to improving the deal, and he will now have economic leverage to persuade Iran and the Europeans to do just that.

Barack Obama, who paid the Iranians $1.7 billion in ransom cash loaded on pallets as well as hundreds of billions more in sanctions relief, predictably criticized the decision to withdraw — which is tantamount to an endorsement in our book. “Walking away from the JCPOA turns our back on America’s closest allies,” Obama admonished, adding that it’s “a serious mistake.” But the biggest mistake was made by Obama and his feckless secretary of state, Kerry, caving in to one Iranian demand after another and agreeing to the deal. As we said at the time, “You want it bad, you’ll get it bad.”

Obama was so desperate for a foreign policy “victory” that getting a deal was more important than the content of the deal. Having agreed to a deal that he knew would never pass the Senate as a treaty, the minute the ink was dry Obama instead ran to the United Nations, which passed a Security Council Resolution establishing the deal’s terms. But only laws passed by the U.S. Congress, or treaties approved by the Senate, are binding on the actions of the United States. And as “constitutional scholar” Obama and long-time Senator Kerry undoubtedly knew, any deal that really was in the United States’ best interest would have been able to pass muster in the Senate and gain the two-thirds votes needed to ratify a treaty.

Obama and his various minions told us time after time that the deal would moderate Iran’s behavior and help bring it back into the community of nations, but a quick survey of recent events shows the spectacular deception of that claim.

Iran is fighting a proxy war in Syria to keep Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in power, and it probably has more troops on the ground than any group other than the Syrian Army. It continues flying military equipment into Syria via Iraq, attracting the occasional Israeli airstrike (including one just last night) and risking major escalation of the fighting there. Its proxies in Yemen have fired Iranian-made weapons at U.S. Navy ships in the Red Sea, as well as used one of Iran’s signature weapons, the explosive boat, to hit and severely damage a Saudi warship. Its ballistic missile activity has continued unabated, despite UN Security Council Resolution 2231’s prohibitions on such activity. In addition to missile testing, Iran has actually fired ballistic missiles at targets in Syria, and its Yemeni proxies have fired Iranian-made missiles into Saudi Arabia.

Needless to say, we don’t see much moderating in Iran’s behavior. Worse, Obama helped fund Iran’s increased terror sponsorship.

In the coming days and weeks we expect the various actors that supported the deal — Democrats, the Leftmedia, the Europeans, the Iranians — will all make the most of the opportunity to paint President Trump as a bumptious and warmongering rube. The Europeans will follow Obama’s cue and decry the undiplomatic behavior of withdrawing from a gentlemen’s agreement. The Iranians will shout about the untrustworthy nature of the United States. We even expect Rep. Maxine Waters will ascribe racism to President Trump’s decision, claiming it is an act of spite against his African-American predecessor.

But all the wailing and teeth-gnashing among various Europeans, Iranians, Democrats (and even some short-sighted Republicans) will merely serve to demonstrate the double injury Obama inflicted when he accepted the deal. The first injury was the deal itself. The second, as we said at the time, was that some future president would have to withdraw and harm our standing with friends and foes alike.

That day has now come, and our standing with our European allies may indeed suffer temporarily. Iran may try to create even more mischief around the Middle East. Oil markets and the U.S. and world economies may feel some pain as Iran’s oil market is squeezed.

But the undeniable fact is that the existing nuclear agreement merely kicked the can down the road for a decade, ensuring that Iran would emerge with a full, UN-approved nuclear fuel cycle that would enable very rapid nuclear breakout in the future. Dealing with this problem now, even if painful, is vastly better than dealing with it later, when it may not only be painful but also deadly. Withdrawing from the nuclear deal is a first step in the right direction.

On a final note, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un should take note that Trump isn’t messing around. Perhaps he already has, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returns home today from Pyongyang with three released American hostages.

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Donald Trump Ends the Obama Mirage

The Iran nuclear deal, 2015-2018

By Matthew Continetti
May 8, 2018 3:03 pm

Washington Free Beacon

President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aka the Iran nuclear deal, on the afternoon of May 8. The deal, announced to such fanfare in July 2015, did not live to see its third birthday. And for that, I am grateful.

Why? Because the president said not only that America will be leaving the accord. He declared that the period of waxing Iranian influence in the Middle East is at an end. The deal financed several years of Iranian expansion through Shiite proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. By reimposing sanctions, President Trump will weaken an already ailing Iranian economy. The Iranian currency, the rial, has plummeted in recent weeks. Inflation is rampant. The financial system is corrupted, dysfunctional. Strikes are proliferating, and often turn into displays against the government. This is a situation the United States should seek not to mitigate but to exacerbate.

Removing ourselves from the deal puts Iran on the defensive. Its people and government are divided and uncertain how to respond. Its leverage is minimal. Iranian citizens have seen their leaders use the money from the deal not to improve the economic lot of the average person but to fund the military, IRGC, and other instruments of foreign adventurism. Implicit in the deal was recognition of the Islamic regime as a legitimate member of the so-called “international community.” President Trump has rescinded that recognition and the standing that came with it. The issue is no longer Iranian compliance with an agreement that contained loopholes through which you could launch a Fateh-110 heavy missile. The issue is whether Iran chooses to become a responsible player or not, whether it curbs its imperial designs, cuts off its militias, abandons terrorism, opens its public square, and ceases its threats to and harassment of the United States and her allies. That choice is not Donald Trump’s to make. It is the Iranian regime’s.

Trump has made his choice. Like he did with the Supreme Court, the Paris Climate Accord, and the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, Trump kept a promise made many times throughout the campaign. In truth, anyone who has listened to Trump over the last several years should not be surprised by his decision. From the beginning, he understood that any deal which gives the weaker party benefits up front in exchange for minimal temporary concessions is not a deal worth taking. And since he does not accept the worldview that inspired the deal, there is no reason for Trump to remain in it.

The worldview Trump opposes privileges therapy and dialogue over realism and hard decisions. It imagines that the Iranian theocracy is a reliable or trustworthy hedge against Sunni power and will liberalize gradually as the arc of justice progresses. These are the ideas that motivated the presidency of Barack Obama. The Iran deal was the signature achievement of Obama’s second term, and it is now gone. In truth, though, Obama’s legacy was disappearing long before Trump made his announcement. Obama’s legacy, like much of his self-presentation, was a mirage, a pleasing and attractive image that, upon closer inspection, loses coherence.

Because he governed so extensively through executive order and administrative fiat, because he was so contemptuous of criticism and had a “my way or the highway” approach to negotiations with Republicans (though not with Iranians), the longevity of Obama’s agenda depended heavily on his party winning a third consecutive term in the White House. As Tom Cotton warned the Iranians years ago, an agreement entered into by a president and not submitted to the Senate as a treaty can be abrogated by the next man who holds the office. Hillary Clinton’s failure doomed the Iran deal and the reputations it had established. It was Barack Obama and John Kerry who allowed Donald Trump to exit the deal by rejecting longstanding procedure. Perhaps it was knowledge of this fact that inspired Kerry in his desperate attempt to preserve the agreement.

Trump has spent much of his time in office reversing Obama policies that were made outside of, or in opposition to, America’s constitutional framework. He has had the hardest time repealing Obamacare, for the very reason that the Affordable Care Act was passed by the Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. That is a lesson for any president: To have a long-lasting influence on American life, work within the system bequeathed to us by the Founders.

Because Republicans widely shared a negative attitude toward the Iran deal, many people assume that President Trump is doing what any other GOP president would do. But I am not sure. Another Republican president who had come up through the political system, or been enmeshed in the foreign policy establishment, or held elite opinion in esteem may well have given in to pressure to remain in the Paris accord, keep the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, and stay, at least partly, in the JCPOA. Trump’s outsider status and independence give him the freedom not only to flout political correctness but to repudiate the international and domestic consensus in ways his supporters love.

It took a small boy to say the emperor had no clothes. And it took Donald Trump to say that Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy was a superficial and dangerous mirage.

Matthew Continetti is the Editor in Chief of the Washington Free Beacon. He can be reached at comments@freebeacon.com.

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Defying world, Trump says US withdrawing from Iran nuclear deal

Citing Israeli intelligence, president slams ‘defective’ pact, promises ‘highest level of economic sanction’ on Tehran

By ERIC CORTELLESSA

8 May 2018, 9:46 pm

Times of Israel

WASHINGTON — President Trump announced the US was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday, following through on a campaign promise and defying European allies who implored him to maintain an agreement that international agencies have said Tehran is honoring.

In a highly anticipated address from the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room, Trump cast the landmark agreement forged under predecessor Barack Obama as “defective” and unable to rein in Iranian behavior or halt the Islamic Republic’s quest to develop nuclear weapons.

“I’m announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal,” he said, adding that his administration “will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction.”

Trump said the 2015 agreement, which included Germany, France, Russia, China and Britain, was a “horrible one-sided deal that should never ever have been made.”

His remarks came ahead of his self-imposed May 12 deadline to walk away from the deal; that date is when the president would be required to renew waivers on sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program as required under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal is formally called.

Trump emphasized that sanctions would also apply to other nations that did business with Iran, meaning that the United States could very well apply sanctions on its closest European allies. “America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail,” Trump said.

However, officials said European companies would have several months to pull out of the Iranian market.

Trump said that his explosive move would signal “the United States no longer makes empty threats” on the world stage. “When I make promises, I keep them,” he said.

Responding to the move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has lobbied against the deal, said he offered his full support for Trump’s “bold move.”

In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran would remain in the deal, but his country could resume nuclear activity if need be.

European signatories vowed to stick by the agreement.

In January, Trump waived sanctions for the third time in his presidency, but said he wouldn’t take that action again unless Congress and European allies amended the pact.

US President Donald Trump signs a document reinstating sanctions against Iran after announcing the US withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear deal, in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on May 8, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB)

Since then, international negotiators have unsuccessfully sought to make changes to the deal — and Tehran has refused to accept any alterations to its terms.

One official briefed on the decision said Trump would move to reimpose all sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 deal, not just the ones facing an immediate deadline.

As administration officials briefed congressional leaders about Trump’s plans Tuesday, they emphasized that just as with a major Asia trade deal and the Paris climate pact that Trump has abandoned, he remains open to renegotiating a better deal, one person briefed on the talks said.

The Iran agreement, struck in 2015 by the United States, other world powers, and Iran, lifted most US and international sanctions against the country. In return, Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program making it impossible to produce a bomb, along with rigorous inspections.

Over the last several weeks, leaders from France, Britain, and Germany have all lobbied the president not to abscond from the accord, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu campaigned assiduously to discredit the deal.

Last week, he gave a PowerPoint presentation detailing a trove of documents the Mossad scooped that outline Iran’s covert attempts at developing a nuclear arsenal. Trump cited the trove and said the documents proved he was “100 percent right” in his skepticism and antipathy to the deal.

Trump has long cast the JCPOA as “worst deal ever negotiated” and a symbol of American weakness.

Trump signaled hours before his announcement an intention to undo the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy achievement.

Responding to recent reports that former secretary of state John Kerry recently met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to try and salvage the deal, Trump tweeted: “John Kerry can’t get over the fact that he had his chance and blew it! Stay away from negotiations John, you are hurting your country!”

Hours before the announcement, European countries met to underline their support for the agreement. Senior officials from Britain, France, and Germany met in Brussels with Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs, Abbas Araghchi.

If the deal collapses, Iran would be free to resume prohibited enrichment activities, while businesses and banks doing business with Iran would have to scramble to extricate themselves or run afoul of the US American officials, who were dusting off plans for how to sell a pullout to the public and explain its complex financial ramifications.

In Iran, many were deeply concerned about how Trump’s decision could affect the already struggling economy.

In Tehran earlier Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani sought to calm nerves, smiling as he appeared at a petroleum expo. He didn’t name Trump directly, but emphasized that Iran continued to seek “engagement with the world.”

“It is possible that we will face some problems for two or three months, but we will pass through this,” Rouhani said.

From left, US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, US Secretary of State John Kerry, and US Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, second from right, at a hotel in Vienna, Austria, Saturday, June 27, 2015. (Carlos Barria/Pool via AP)

Members of the Obama administration who helped solidify the international agreement told reporters before Trump’s announcement that the consequences of blowing up the deal could be cataclysmic.

“Iran could start on its way back to getting a nuclear weapon,” said Wendy Sherman, a former State Department official in the Obama administration who was the chief US negotiator of the agreement. “It raises risk of conflict in the Middle East. It could potentially put our forces at risk everywhere. It also puts Americans being held in Iran more at risk. It will weaken our alliances with Europe, and for that matter Russia and China, who are important to the North Korea negotiation. This is a crisis that Trump is precipitating himself.”

In his speech, Trump said “a constructive deal could easily been struck at the time, but it wasn’t.” The ensuing deal was “a great embarrassment to me as a citizen and all citizens of the United States.”

As he has in the past, he cast the deal’s sunset provisions, which allow certain restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program to expire over time, as unacceptable. He said Tuesday, however, that they led Iran to “the nuclear brink” and that, “If I allowed this deal to stand, there would soon be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”

He further portrayed the accord as one that would lead to Iran crossing the nuclear threshold, not one that would prevent that.

“It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” he said. “The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen.”

He also said that Iran would ultimately want to re-negotate another deal that fully meets Trump’s demands — something Iran itself has said it would not do. “The fact is they are going to want to make a new and lasting deal,” Trump said.

Anthony Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, warned this move will give hardliners in Iran an excuse to restart their pursuit of nuclear weapons, but without a united international coalition to oppose them, or inspectors on the ground to expose them.” He said that meant, “we would get to the point where we would have to live with an Iranian nuclear weapon or get into a conflict.”

He also surmised that if Iran and Europe decide to stick with the deal, despite Trump’s refusal to renew the sanction waivers, that will “at some point force the administration to sanction our closest allies to stop them from doing business with Iran.”

“So we’re on a collision course in two directions,” he added.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Posts of possible interest:

• Trump Nukes The Iran Deal!!! Posted by Rob; Joshua Pundit; 5/8/18 12:19 PM

• Trump Pulls Out of Iran Deal, ‘Defective at Its Core’; By Randy DeSoto; Western Journal; May 8, 2018 11:49am

• TEARS IN TEHRAN: Trump Pulls US Out Of Iran Nuclear Deal; By
  Saagar Enjeti; The Daily Caller; 05/08/2018 2:21 PM 

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Trump Nixes Iran Nuke Deal

John R. Houk, Blog Editor

© May 9, 2018

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Promise Kept — Trump Nukes Iran Deal

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