There Is No ‘Better’ Nuclear Deal to Be Had

The American Conservative:

Foreign Policy reports that Trump will decertify the nuclear deal, and it will then pursue the mirage of a better deal:

The move would put both Iran and European allies on notice that the Trump administration will insist on a new agreement with Tehran to address what it sees as shortcomings in the original 2015 deal [bold mine-DL], especially the fact that key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will end in 10 years, sources familiar with the administration’s deliberations told Foreign Policy.

There is no “better” nuclear deal to be had with Iran, so it’s not clear what the administration hopes to achieve. Perhaps they want to go through the motions of pretending to value a diplomatic solution before reneging on our obligations, but the end result will be much the same. All of the other parties are satisfied with the deal as it is, and none of them is open to renegotiating any part of it. The “shortcomings” that the administration sees are the necessary compromises required to make a deal possible. If you get rid of these so-called “shortcomings,” you blow up the deal, because Iran won’t accept harsher terms, and the U.S. will have no allied support for renegotiating something that was already competently negotiated the first time. Indeed, faulting the deal for its supposed inadequacies is a slight against the allied governments that helped to negotiate the agreement, and they are unlikely to go along with an effort that considers their previous diplomacy to be a failure. Trump essentially wants Iran to give up much more while having far less leverage over them, and he expects the rest of the world to fall in line with this ridiculous plan because he wishes it. The administration’s pursuit of a “better” deal will end in failure. The bigger problem is that in making the attempt they will remain blind to the fact that the deal is a success, and they are still determined to undermine it no matter what.