Nuclear Issues

Stephen Walt writes that Donald Trump's goal in withdrawing the United States from the JCPOA is to prevent Iran from establishing normal relations with the rest of the world.

Stephen M. Walt asks the following question: Is the real problem that Washington can't trust others, or rather that other states can't trust it? 

While Washington and the media were preoccupied with James Comey hearings and Donald Trump press conferences this week, what else was going on that we didn't hear about? Or, ought to be paying closer attention to? The World's Marco Werman talked to Nick Burns to find out. 

"...[K]eeping Iran at arm's length (or worse) reduces U.S. diplomatic leverage and flexibility. As long as U.S. Middle East policy remains fixated on its 'special relationships' with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and to some extent Egypt, these states will continue to take U.S. support for granted and ignore U.S. preferences more often than we'd like. But if the United States had decent working relations with every state in the region — including Iran — it could work constructively with any or all of them."

"Now that President Barack Obama has secured more than enough votes in the U.S. Senate to assure the implementation of the agreement with Iran on nuclear issues and sanctions, we can focus on the lessons learned from the process’ intense political dynamics. Three in particular stand out: U.S.-Israeli, U.S.-Saudi Arabian/Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and GCC-Iranian relations. U.S.-Israeli bilateral ties get the most attention these days, but all three are equally important, and turbulent in their own ways."

"...[A]nyone who questions the special relationship or the role the lobby plays in preserving it is still likely to be accused of anti-Semitism (if a gentile) or self-hatred (if Jewish). The special relationship has rested to some degree on intimidation, and as noted most people don't like being bullied. The question, therefore, is whether this flap will turn out to be an isolated incident or whether more people will begin to say what they really think."

"This week’s extension in the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 is a welcomed jolt of composure and realism in a process that for years has been characterized by wild allegations, emotional retorts and intemperate actions. The decision to extend talks and keep negotiating to achieve a final agreement by next summer seems to cement the decision to deal with the accusations of Iran’s alleged desire to obtain a nuclear bomb as a technical issue that has a technical solution, rather than a continuation of the tendency of the United States and Israel, primarily, to treat Iran as a hapless colonial subject."

We should be cheering the fact that the American and Iranian foreign ministers are now trading accusations in public about who is to blame for the lack of a full agreement in last week’s Geneva negotiations on the issues of Iran’s nuclear industry and the UN and American sanctions on Iran. It is so much healthier to have the foreign ministers exchanging ideas of how to reach a negotiated agreement than to have them threaten each other with more sanctions and faster development of nuclear capabilities.