Iran deal endangered if Trump seeks to renegotiate

“It remains to be seen if Trump would escalate against Iran in such a fashion, but the message he sent early on is that the USA will not feel as constrained by the JCPOA to respond to the rest of Iran’s non-nuclear threats”. Vice President-elect Mike Pence vowed that the deal will be “ripped up” upon consultation with US allies. Though that doesn’t mean it will survive.

A president Donald Trump will nearly certainly test this hypothesis.

PETER KENYON, BYLINE: In March, Donald Trump addressed AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel group.

Experts say the US could withdraw, but unilateral action would create a huge rift with Europe, Russia and China.

In September, Trump said that if Iran’s ships provoke USA ships they will be shot out of the water.

By August the presidential candidate had tempered his rhetoric, saying he would not “rip up” the deal but would “police it so tough they don’t have a chance”. Analysts are now trying to figure out which of those paths, if any, Trump administration might follow.

Some officials believe that if Trump adopts hostile policies towards Iran, this will empower hardliners in Iran and unite their supporters, which in fact hints at more political pressure and aggressive regional policy. “Our economy is weak, when something like this happens, people just start buying, no one is selling”.

In a linked development, contacts made in the past few days between European leaders and the President-elect uncovered their concern over Trump’s policies, asking for clarifications on some of his positions.

KENYON: David Albright with the Institute for Science and International Studies (ph) is critical of Iran’s behavior, both before and after the agreement. Tehran is not committed to release information on its nuclear program prior to the date of the deal – including how far it had progressed towards a weapon. In September, the U.S. Treasury Department granted aircraft makers licences to deliver new planes to Tehran, including 80 being sold by Boeing Co.to Iran’s national air carrier.

“What matters to Iran and its people and would be a gauge for their judgement, is the next United States administration’s performance and executive policies”, he underlined. It had 130.1 tonnes of the material on Tuesday, the watchdog said.

Through all this, Iranian leaders have the audacity to accuse the USA of being the side to violate the nuclear accord.

Sanctions experts caution that fallout from a Trump-led effort to kill the Iranian nuclear deal could very well lead to Washington imposing new economic and trade sanctions against Iran. The administration made huge concessions that allowed Iran to dismantle global sanctions without dismantling key elements of its nuclear program, which continues to advance. Iran has little incentive to open talks over a deal it is satisfied with. The US Congress is due to vote next month on whether to renew those sanctions, which are linked to Iran’s human rights record and ballistic missile tests.

There are multiple pressing national security threats that will likely be in Trump’s in-box on January 20, from North Korea’s real and growing nuclear weapons arsenal to the ongoing destabilization of much of the Middle East.

“I don’t think he should scrap it”. And the odds of it surviving and seeing its second anniversary are really questionable.