By Tony Robinson for DiEM25.
US President Donald Trump’s refusal to recertify the Iran Nuclear Deal effectively sets a bomb ticking beneath it. The deal was the product of years of diplomatic moves by the international community to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons after the International Atomic Energy Agency declared Iran to be in violation of its obligations concerning the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium.
The agreement, which was signed by the US during the Obama administration, was the product of painstaking diplomacy. According to the IAEA and all other signatories to the accord (Iran, Russia, China, the UK, France, Germany and the EU), Iran is in complete compliance and the deal continues: Iran continues to be incapable of producing nuclear weapons, and in return the world can trade with Iran.
Trump has always shown his disgust for the deal. It’s true it wasn’t a peace treaty; there were no provisions saying that all the parties to the treaty would have to be friends afterwards, and US-Iranian hostility has continued on both sides through Iran’s testing of ballistic missiles and the rhetoric of US politicians, while Israel and Saudi Arabia both actively encourage Trump’s anti-Iran position.
In this light, Trump’s refusal to recertify the deal, something which then gives Congress the power to impose sanctions and thereby destroy the agreement, is not a surprise. It can be added to the increasingly long list of deals that the US is destroying or threatening under this presidency: The Paris Climate Accord (where Trump already announced his intention to pull the USA out and kickstart the US coal industry), the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (where he indicated that he wanted to increase the US stock of nuclear weapons ten-fold), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (taking the USA out of this agreement was one of Trump’s first actions as president), and no doubt many others.
This “rogue” behaviour should concern us all. The US is turning its back on dialogue and diplomacy. They increasingly show, through their president, that they are willing to take the world to war to impose their will and to destroy the planet to protect their toxic industries. Isolationism, arrogance, ignorance, intolerance, misogyny and xenophobia increasingly characterise this rogue president.
Today the world needs all members of the international community, more than ever before, to engage in dialogue as the only way to resolve conflict.
