President
Trump was livid. Why, he asked his advisers in mid-July, should he go
along with what he considered the failed Obama-era policy toward Iran
and prop up an international nuclear deal he saw as disastrous?
He
was incensed by the arguments of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson,
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and others that the landmark 2015 deal,
while flawed, offered stability and other benefits. He did not want to
certify to Congress that the agreement remained in the vital U.S.
national security interest and that Iran was meeting its obligations. He
did not think either was true.
“He threw a fit,” said one person familiar with the meeting. “. . . He was furious. Really furious. It’s clear he felt jammed.”
So
White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster and other senior
advisers came up with a plan — one aimed at accommodating Trump’s
loathing of the Iran deal as “an embarrassment” without killing it
outright.
To get Trump, in other words, to compromise.
President Trump spoke about the agreement with Iran on their nuclear program when meeting with military leaders on Oct. 5.
(The Washington Post)
“McMaster realized we
just cannot come back here next time with a binary option — certify or
decertify,” an exercise Congress requires every 90 days, said a person
familiar with the July discussion. “He put his team to work on a range
of other options, including a decertification option that would involve
Congress” and would not immediately break the deal.
That
effort — described by seven people familiar with the debate, most of
whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential
discussions — led to a revamping of the U.S. approach to Iran and the
nuclear pact that Trump is set to announce this week and which
congressional leaders were briefed about on Wednesday. Under the
expected announcement, Trump will declare that the deal is not in the
U.S. national interest while stopping short of recommending renewed
nuclear sanctions.
The deliberations show
the extent to which Trump’s national security team in recent months has
been occupied with navigating the future of the Iran nuclear deal,
which Trump repeatedly vowed to throw out as a “disaster” during the
campaign. The sometimes angry internal debate also provides another
illustration of the way in which Trump’s gut impulses and desire for
dramatic action have often collided with the subtlety of international
diplomacy.
The
Iran agreement, brokered by President Barack Obama, was never designed
to do many of the things Trump criticizes it for lacking. Many of his
own advisers — and many Republican leaders and key U.S. allies — see it
as a valuable tool in stopping an Iranian nuclear bomb.
The
solution is a compromise that retains the agreement but also puts Iran
and U.S. allies on notice that Trump is willing to walk away. Meanwhile,
Trump is likely to make the case that as the Islamic State terrorist
group is weakened, Iran is reasserting itself as the most destructive
influence in the Middle East and using the nuclear deal as cover to do
so.
“He doesn’t want to certify the Iran
deal for more domestic reasons than international ones,” said Vali Nasr,
dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “He
doesn’t want to certify that any piece of the Obama strategy is
working.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) leaves a meeting of Republican senators Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Trump
is expected to announce new conditions for U.S. participation in the
agreement among the U.S., Iran, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and
China and punt the issue to Congress. He may also announce new sanctions
or penalties on Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Trump
said Wednesday that a decision is coming “very soon,” and others
familiar with White House planning said they expect a speech Thursday or
Friday in which Trump explains the new U.S. position.
“We
are on a tightrope. We don’t know what will happen,” said one Western
diplomat worried that Trump’s action will undermine the international
agreement.
As
a practical matter, Trump’s expected move will place the onus on
Congress to decide what to do next. Working with Sen. Tom Cotton
(R-Ark.), a leading congressional hawk on Iran, the White House would
refrain from recommending that Congress reimpose nuclear sanctions that
were suspended under the deal.
That would
buy time for new legislation codifying Trump’s conditions for remaining
in the deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a
Republican congressional aide said. It would also increase U.S.
leverage with European allies who don’t want to renegotiate the deal,
said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Trump has
not yet announced his plan.
“To
get us on the right foot on the Iran strategy, we do need to use this
certification decision, this moment, to launch a real effort to plug the
holes and the weaknesses in the JCPOA,” the aide said.
“We
need to send the message that the president does not feel constrained
by the JCPOA and does not feel beholden to it” while seeking an
extension of the deal’s restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities and
other modifications.
Cotton
laid out that approach in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations
this month, in which he accused Iran of harming U.S. interests in the
Middle East and scheming to preserve its ability to eventually produce a
bomb.
The speaker and the setting were clear signals that the Iran hard-
liner would block for Trump in two ways. By holding off on new sanctions that would bust the deal, Cotton helps Trump rebuff the claim of sabotage from Democrats and other parties to the agreement. And because of his history of advocating tough measures against Iran, he may help protect the White House from criticism by conservatives who want to do away with the deal.
liner would block for Trump in two ways. By holding off on new sanctions that would bust the deal, Cotton helps Trump rebuff the claim of sabotage from Democrats and other parties to the agreement. And because of his history of advocating tough measures against Iran, he may help protect the White House from criticism by conservatives who want to do away with the deal.
“It would give a few months’
or years’ lead time to give time to get U.S. allies on board with the
same restrictions — a unified front that will put lots of pressure on
the Iranians” to reopen the deal, the aide said.
Britain,
France and Germany, along with the European Union’s foreign policy
chief, have argued to Congress and the Trump administration that the
deal cannot be redone. Iran has said the same.
The
pivotal moment in the administration’s Iran debate came on July 17,
when the president balked when presented with the consensus
recommendation of his national security advisers that he should submit
the July congressional certification. He argued with aides all that
afternoon, forcing a postponement of a planned announcement and a
rewriting of White House talking points.
The
decision was clumsily announced that evening, hours before a legal
deadline, along with a declaration that Trump planned to toughen
expectations and enforcement.
The
administration announced new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic
missile program the following day. But only sanctions related to the
country’s disputed nuclear program are covered by the 2015 deal. Iran
claims that it has never sought a nuclear weapon and that its nuclear
research and development is intended for medicine and energy.
The
first certification of Trump’s presidency came in April, when Trump was
also reluctant but agreed on the grounds that the administration was
just beginning a broad review of its Iran strategy and would wait for
major decisions, the people familiar with the debate said.
By
July, the president’s frustration was evident. He made it clear that he
felt strong-armed and that the July certification would be his last,
several people familiar with the discussion said.
Trump
took the internal confrontation public in an interview with the Wall
Street Journal in which he said he regretted the decision. The
experience also further soured Trump on Tillerson, who he complained
consistently came forward with only “totally conventional” approaches to
foreign policy problems, people familiar with Trump’s thinking have
said.
It
would fall to Tillerson and the State Department to try to negotiate
new terms for the Iran deal, and ally after ally has bent his ear with
arguments that the deal should be preserved as it is.
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“The
nuclear deal was a crucial agreement that neutralized its nuclear
threat,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Tuesday, following
a telephone call with Tillerson. “The U.K. supports the deal and
stresses the importance of all parties continuing to uphold their
commitments.”
Tillerson joined all of
Trump’s other top national security advisers in recommending last month
that Trump decertify the deal as part of a strategy some refer to as
“decertify, pressure and fix.”
As Trump
officials briefed lawmakers Wednesday, two Obama administration
architects of the deal, former secretary of state John F. Kerry and
former energy secretary Ernest Moniz, were also on Capitol Hill arguing
in defense of the original agreement.
Congress
may now do away with the requirement that the president recommit to the
deal every 90 days, something that skeptical lawmakers of both parties
mandated when Obama negotiated the agreement.
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