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Notes -
Continuing with the recent theme of geopolitical posts:
What's the steelman for Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA ("The Iran Deal") in 2018?
I feel I've only seen universal condemnation for this decision from the editorial sections of journals, newspapers and other forms of media, with defenses only mounted by the occasional conservative pundit. Naturally, it's not hard to find elected Republicans in favour of pulling out, but it's difficult to tell how much of that is due to partisanship vs their objective thoughts on the situation. Still, the increasing political homogenisation and partisanship of mainstream media over the last few years (or maybe I'm naive and it's always been like this) means that I no longer assume that their editorial stances are primarily motivated out of concern for the truth either, so I'm curious about the opinions of people here. While I asked for the steelman for pulling out, as I'm particularly interesting in hearing the defenses of this decision, I'm keen to hear people's thoughts about the deal more generally.
To help with sparking some dialogue, here are some angles from which I think it's interesting to come at the topic:
1/ To what extent does whether or not the deal was good for the US depend on political positioning (i.e. interventionist/isolationist, pro-Israel vs anti-Israel (and possible SA?), attitudes regarding oil/other commodities, etc)?
2/ Even if the deal was bad, was it bad enough that withdrawing from it was a net positive for the US?
3/ Regardless of whether withdrawing was correct or not, have the two US administrations acted sensibly in advancing their ME aims (which are obviously not identical) in this post-JCPOA reality?
Feel free to ignore the above suggestions however and come at the topic any way you like!
The biggest flaw in the JCPOA was that the restrictions on uranium enrichment, intended to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, expired at T+10-15 years, thus potentially allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear arsenal 'later' rather than 'never'.
That does seem like a flaw, but it doesn't seem like a reason for the US to withdraw before 10 years.
True; we should have re-negotiated, changing '10-15 years' to 'until the signatories unanimously agree to lift the restrictions, which won't happen as long as you keep supporting Palestinian claims on Tel Aviv.'
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