The real reason Donald Trump just bailed on the Iran deal
After nearly a year and a half of hemming and hawing on the issue, Donald Trump announced today that the United States is withdrawing from President Obama’s peace deal with Iran. On the surface it feels like just another insecure jealous stab at Obama’s legacy, and yet another attempt at firing up his own bloodthirsty racist base. But given the timing, and the manner in which the White House is framing what happens next, there appears to be more to it.
While there is much focus today on the fact that America’s allies couldn’t convince Donald Trump to stick with the Iran deal, the larger story here may be that Trump couldn’t convince any of his allies to abandon it. Expect Iran to beat its chest to an extent, and then we’ll see if Iran decides to keep the deal in place with the other participants. This would place Trump in the weak position of trying to punish Iran with U.S. sanctions that would be watered down by Iran’s ability to continue selling its oil to everyone else.
As a result of Trump’s move today, U.S. gas prices will go up, and the U.S. economy could take a worse short term hit than the Iranian economy. Trump doesn’t understand macroeconomics on this level, and there is no indication that he has any remaining advisers who could explain it to him. That said, Trump has to know that he’s rolling the dice with this move, and that the dice are loaded against him. It’s a sign of just how desperate he’s become to change the narrative of his failed presidency. It does not, however, appear to be a prelude to war.
Donald Trump spent the election making clear that he understood, if only on an elementary level, that starting a land war eventually blows back on a president. During his time in office, he’s shied away from large scale military action at every turn. He’s given every indication that he fears being a wartime president. Instead, his White House put out a statement today laying out what Iran would have to do in order to land a new peace deal, and the list is telling.
Trump is basically demanding that Iran stop doing a bunch of things it’s not even doing. All Iran has to do is play along and promise to stop doing these things, and Trump will give them a new deal that’s basically the same as the old one. The only real difference: this deal will have Trump’s name on it instead of Obama’s name, so that Trump can take credit for Obama’s accomplishment. No one outside of his base would buy this, but that never seems to bother him. Trump’s big risk here is that, because he’s in the weakest position of any U.S. President since Richard Nixon in 1974, Iran could use this as an opportunity to demand a more favorable revised deal, just as the TPP nations did after Trump made the mistake of initially abandoning that deal.
In any case, the real upshot here is that Donald Trump – who has spent his illegitimate presidency yelling a lot of things while tepidly doing very little – is now desperate enough to begin rolling the dice. The odds are overwhelmingly against him being able to make the Iran situation work in his favor. But when you’re losing as badly as Trump is, and time is running out, the odds are always against your desperation moves.
