{"id":612,"date":"2017-02-17T04:35:25","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T04:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/?p=612"},"modified":"2017-02-17T04:35:25","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T04:35:25","slug":"trump-and-netanyahu-aligning-on-iran-is-a-bad-sign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/2017\/02\/17\/trump-and-netanyahu-aligning-on-iran-is-a-bad-sign\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Netanyahu Aligning on Iran is a Bad Sign"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the lead up to this week\u2019s meeting between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,\u00a0multiple<\/a>\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0suggested that one of Netanyahu\u2019s main goals would be pushing Trump to impose new sanctions on Iran, a move that could dangerously escalate already high tensions between the U.S. and Iran and put us one step closer to war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Among other similarities, both leaders have been staunch opponents of the Iran nuclear agreement, which lifted sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran scaling down its nuclear program and fulfilling obligations that verifiably block its potential paths to obtaining nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During the campaign, Trump\u00a0pledged<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cdismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.\u201d Should he fulfill that pledge, the best means of ensuring Iran cannot obtain nuclear weapons would be gone, and the dangerous and counterproductive alternative of bombing Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities would be hailed by some as the necessary next step. While Netanyahu probably stopped short of asking Trump to abandon the agreement outright, he may have pushed for further sanctions against Iran that could ultimately serve to unravel the deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That may be the point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), was\u00a0quoted in the Washington Post<\/a>\u00a0last month as saying, \u201cWhat\u2019d I\u2019d like to see is them [the Trump administration] going along with the deal, but subtly antagonizing the Iranians enough so the Iranians want to scrap it\u2026 More non-nuclear sanctions. Pushing the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] to inspect more. We can force them to be the ones to pull the trigger.\u201d The subtext of this shameless strategy, a strategy\u00a0shared and expressed<\/a>\u00a0by other conservative foreign policy operatives, is to create a situation in which the administration can argue that Iran is to blame for the agreement\u2019s collapse, effectively creating a false pretense for war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Congress, for its part, seems to have gotten that memo. Since the convening of the 115th Congress, at least\u00a0three<\/a>\u00a0separate<\/a>\u00a0bills<\/a>\u00a0have been introduced that would impose new non-nuclear sanctions on Iran. The signing of any of these bills into law could violate the nuclear agreement, and would likely be perceived that way by Iran even if the letter of the agreement were followed. While the bills have yet to pick up steam, they certainly could if Congressional leadership got behind them.\u00a0That may be why<\/a>\u00a0Netanyahu\u2019s trip includes\u00a0meetings with Congressional leaders<\/a>\u00a0on both sides of the isle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Meanwhile, the administration has been implementing a range of actions that also seem to follow the \u201cantagonizing the Iranians\u201d playbook. Trump\u2019s executive order on refugees, the realization of his campaign promise of a Muslim ban, was the administration\u2019s first jab at Iran. In addition to being a dangerous and discriminatory executive order, Trump\u2019s Muslim ban blocked citizens of Iran from traveling to the U.S., including\u00a0dual nationals from allied countries<\/a>. In so doing, it may have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the nuclear agreement,\u00a0which states<\/a>\u00a0that the U.S. \u201cwill refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalisation of trade and economic relations with Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After Iran\u2019s recent ballistic missile test, which\u00a0did not violate the agreement<\/a>, then national security advisor Michael Flynn (who\u00a0resigned on Monday<\/a>\u00a0less than a month after assuming the role)\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that the U.S. was \u201cofficially putting Iran on notice.\u201d Unclear on his meaning, reporters asked whether military options were being considered, to which a White House official replied, \u201cWe are considering a whole range of options.\u201d Thus with a couple of vague statements, the administration raised the prospect that it might start a war with Iran regardless of whether it continues to abide by the nuclear agreement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Since then, Trump\u00a0sanctioned 25 Iranian individuals and entities<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0deployed a Navy destroyer<\/a>\u00a0off the coast of Yemen, where the U.S. has been backing a brutal bombing campaign against Houthi rebels, who have received some Iranian support, since 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While the administration may not have violated the letter of the nuclear agreement so far, each rattling of the sabre has increased tensions and empowered hardliners in Iran months before its upcoming presidential election.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To make matters worse, Trump may be considering new escalations. One option reportedly under consideration is\u00a0designating the IRGC<\/a>, a branch of Iran\u2019s armed forces, as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), which\u00a0could in fact violate the letter of the agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Another\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0suggests that the administration is considering pressuring the IAEA to demand access to Iranian military sites in the course of its work to ensure compliance with the nuclear agreement, a move specifically called for in the strategy outlined by Rubin. While the deal allows for this\u00a0if the IAEA suspects<\/a>\u00a0Iran is using a military site for nuclear purposes, there\u2019s no indication that the IAEA harbors any suspicion, let alone evidence. Needless to say, Iran would be furious if the IAEA demanded access absent a reasonable suspicion, and may even refuse to grant it, to which Trump could claim a violation of the deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If Trump continues antagonizing Iran to the point that it abandons the agreement or otherwise lashes out, he could make a case, however contrived it might be, for war. Netanyahu\u2019s perpetual bashing of Iran as a\u00a0\u201cterrorist regime,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0among other hostile descriptors, suggests he would be among the first to back Trump up. Regardless of their intent, Trump and Netanyahu\u2019s belligerence towards Iran is steadily increasing the risk of war, and that\u2019s cause for grave concern.\u00a0Military experts<\/a>\u00a0have explained that bombing Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities would only delay Iran\u2019s nuclear program by a few years, and would likely lead Iran to build new facilities deeper underground. That in turn would likely lead to further escalation and potentially a full scale ground war that would not only cost an exorbitant amount of taxpayer dollars, but would also cost countless lives and fuel anti-American sentiment and extremism across the Middle East for years to come.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/trump-and-netanyahu-aligning-on-iran-is-a-bad-sign_us_58a64696e4b0fa149f9ac404<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the lead up to this week\u2019s meeting between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,\u00a0multiple\u00a0reports\u00a0suggested that one of Netanyahu\u2019s main goals would be pushing Trump to impose new sanctions on Iran, a move that could dangerously escalate already high tensions between the U.S. and Iran and put us one step closer to war. Among other similarities, both leaders… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}