IT may not be as bad as it looks. President Trump’s administration is likely this week to renew its certification that Iran is still complying with its obligations under 2015 Geneva agreement limiting its nuclear program to exclude the development of nuclear weapons.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) provides for Washington to certify Iran’s honoring of its commitments every 90 days. If the Trump administration does not renew the sign-off, which it first did in April, Congress would be entitled to take up the issue.
But the White House is also involved in a complete review of its Iranian policy, expected to be completed by the end of summer. For those who believe the Iranians are cleverly pulling the wool over the eyes of the international community, there is the hope the review will be an uncompromising document that will back Trump’s campaign promises he will get tough with Tehran.
Therefore it must be hoped that this purely procedural second White House certification will be the last. There is credible evidence the Iranians set out to welch on the deal even before the ink was dry. Iranians bamboozled then Secretary of State John Kerry and the rest of the international community with a master-class in extended negotiations that, bit by bit, eroded the original harsh demands. They are now busy avoiding the limited promises they did make. They have not, for instance, cut the number of nuclear centrifuges nor have they reduced their stocks of heavy water.
There is simply too much at stake in terms of regional stability and security to pussyfoot around with the Iranians any longer. Liberal opinion in the United States is making much of the perceived power struggle between the “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani and hard-liners around Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei. The latest supposed evidence of this battle is the arrest of the newly re-elected president’s brother Hossein Fereidoun in connection with extensive fraud. But this is not a political power play but rather a tussle over the spoils of power, at which the ayatollahs and their praetorian force the Revolutionary Guards have proved themselves just as greedy as anyone else.
And the absurdity of this is clear. The Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif who ran rings around the P5+1 powers, the US, UK, Germany, Russia, China and the EU is a close associate of President Rouhani. It was not the ayatollahs around Khamenei who cut this deal so advantageous for Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, but the urbane and almost cuddly “reformists” so admired and feted by Americans and European liberals. These people need their heads examined. Iran is playing the good cop, bad cop trick. The Iranian leaders are all on the same side. Their aim is a revanchist and aggressive Iran that will dominate the Middle East.
The proof is staring the international community in the face. Iranian meddling in Eastern Province here in the Kingdom, in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Lebanon is there for all to see, if they only choose to. But Iran continues to portray itself as a much-misunderstood honorable state. On his path to the White House Trump vowed he was not going to be fooled by Iran. The time is fast approaching when he must deliver of this promise.
