Mike Pompeo is most likely bad news for the Iran nuclear agreement
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Donald Trump’s choice of the climate science-denying, torture-backing, military-first, xenophobic Mike Pompeo to be the nation’s top diplomat spurred climate science denying, torture-supporting, military-first xenophobe Bret Stephens, the right-wing nevMike Pompeo is most likely bad news for the Iran nuclear agreement
Donald Trump’s choice of the climate science-denying, torture-backing, military-first, xenophobic Mike Pompeo to be the nation’s top diplomat spurred climate science denying, torture-supporting, military-first xenophobe Bret Stephens, the right-wing never-Trumper columnist hired by The New York Times for balance on its Op-ed pages, to write that Pompeo will be good for diplomacy. That’s like saying the Koch Brothers’ and other oligarchs’ dark money is good for democracy. One of the first diplomatic matters Pompeo will be dealing with is the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). And given both his and his boss’s stances on that subject, the possibility that the multilateral agreement will soon be an historical footnote is quite possible. At Foreign Policy, Dan De Luce and Keith Johnson write: “The selection of Mike Pompeo at State should remove any doubt about the president’s intentions,” said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Two months to go and President Trump will snap back the most powerful economic sanctions against Iran unless there’s a real not a fictional fix to the Iran nuclear deal.” Omri Ceren, managing director of the Israel Project, a Washington organization that works on Middle East issues, said that with or without Tillerson’s exit, the president had made clear he would not keep sanctions relief in place without concrete improvements to the agreement. “In recent days the Trump administration has, if anything, been toughening its stance on what it would take to make the Iran deal worth staying in,” Ceren said. Since January when Trump essentially gave the State Department and Congress until May 12 to work with U.S. allies to fix what he has said since his campaign was a terrible deal with Iran. Otherwise, sanctions could be reimposed on Iran even though everyone agrees Tehran’s leader have complied with the agreement. Read more