Trump Decertified the Iranian Deal, Just ‘Cause

Trump just decertified the Iran deal, and, oh well, it was nice thinking about peace while we had the chance. True, Trump hasn’t actually repealed the deal. He announced new sanctions, according to ABC News, “but didn’t do anything that would alter the Obama-era deal that he has denounced since his presidential campaign.” Decertification is Trump to a T: you don’t accomplish anything, but you manage to create the shittiest possible situation regardless. It’s a real gift.

The deal, Trump said, is no longer in the national security interest of the United States. This decision, which has been referred as “decertification,” is a shift in official position. It is a significant declaration that leaves the nuclear agreement in place, but puts Congress in charge of whether or not to follow up with action — triggering a 60-day window for lawmakers to re-impose sanctions against Iran that were suspended in 2015 as part of the agreement.

Trump decertified the Iran deal just ‘cause, why not, since you’re gutting Obamacare and deciding to let Puerto Rico dehydrate; Trump decided to decertify the Iran deal because you’re well on your way to becoming the Worst President of Every Timeline, yeah baby, and why not light another Roman candle on the fast roller coaster down to geohell? Maybe Congress will rescue the deal, maybe not. The important thing is that this takes the best hope we have with Iran and wades back into David Frum’s “Let’s Invent, and then Invade, the Axis of Evil,” which gave us the tragedy of Iraq. That worked so well, why not repeat it again?

The President said:

“As I have said many times, the Iran Deal was one of the worst and one sided transactions the United States has ever entered into”

What does he think we can get instead? The President thinks that Iran has sponsored terrorism (and the Saudis haven’t) and that the Iranian regime “has committed multiple violations of the agreement” (there are mechanisms to deal with these). Trump called on the intelligence community to look at Iran’s help to the North Korean nuclear program.

Oh! I can help with that one! There’s a base right south of Camp Fantasy, in the northernmost region of the Your Brain is No Longer Functioning Mountain Region. The President says Iran loves the chants “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” because the President and his team of wannabe-Iranian bombers don’t see Iran or its eighty million people—they see whatever Islamophobic, racist-ass caricatures get cooked up on Fox News, where Khomeini is still somehow alive in the year 2017. Trump decertified the deal, because nothing, not even human life or world peace, is more important than repudiating every bit of Obama’s legacy.

The major powers and American struck a deal with Iran in July 2015. It eased sanctions and got real monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program. Trump’s own Defense Secretary said Iran has complied. The agreement got everything we needed from the regime, and now Trump wants out, because the movie in his head tells him being the leading asshole of the world is definitely, assuredly the best way to go.

Trump decertified the Iran deal because he thinks he can get a better one, this man who can’t pass a single piece of legislation and can’t manage to avoid staring at an eclipse. Trump decertified the Iran deal because he doesn’t care. Trump decertified the Iran deal because it doesn’t matter who the Commander-in-Chief is; there is a National Security blob in Washington that no single President can ever fight, and it consumes money and spits out drones and missiles.

Trump is incompetent in a million unusual ways, but he’s particularly, peculiarly incompetent in resisting the mechanisms of institutional influence. In other words, Trump will believe whatever the good people of the military-industrial concept whisper in his ear. That community kicked it around, and decided it was best that we threaten Iran again. After all, the NatSec blob has never forgotten or forgiven Iran for rejecting Western hegemony—and anyway, none of their own sons or daughters got shot in Iraq, so yes, why not set the stage for an eventual war with Iran? Trump decertified the deal, and the people of the world were not surprised at all. The man is barely part of reality. What did we expect?