Will it work? No, say America’s European allies. But Trump’s unorthodox foreign policy has a habit of shaking up the status quo in unexpected ways. No-one imagined a year ago that Trump would be packing his bags for a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un either.
His decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal sends the simple message that Iran cannot be trusted to abide by the norms of the international community and must be treated like the pariah it is.
In doing this, Trump is taking a gamble on which history will one day deliver its verdict — that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are best stopped by challenging the despotic mullahs who run the country rather than making deals with them.
Trump will be accused by some of stoking the potential for military conflict and further destabilising the region by withdrawing from the deal and slapping sanctions back on Tehran. This, critics argue, will only hasten the desire of the Mullahs to build the bomb.
Perhaps so, but the alternative did not offer much comfort to the US.
The nuclear deal with Iran, well intentioned as it was, was a weak one. It was riddled with sunset clauses which would have eventually allowed Iran to develop its nuclear capabilities with impunity. In the meantime the inspection regime was more limited than it should have been. What’s more, the lifting of sanctions gave the Mullahs a financial reward at a time when they continue to s sponsor terrorism across the region and spread their malign influence into Iraq and Syria. The deal did nothing to slow down Tehran’s development of a ballistic missile program that could deliver a nuclear weapon and other deadly warheads across the region and more.
Few experts doubt that Iran wants a nuclear weapon capability at some point — it was caught secretly building uranium enrichment plants in 2002 and 2009.
At best the nuclear deal may have slowed Iran’s progression towards a nuclear bomb but it never changed the calculus that Iran would eventually get one.
What Trump is doing is throwing that model away. His hope is that US economic sanctions and political aggression will achieve what Washington has long hoped for — a popular uprising by Iran’s young population against the Mullahs who have held them hostage, politically and economically, for 40 years.
Trump’s decision sets the scene for a new era of American confrontation with Iran — a regime that is rightly condemned for its barbaric state sponsorship of terrorism in the world.
It is a gamble but the grim alternative was that under the nuclear deal Iran would continue its march — slowly but inevitably — towards becoming a nuclear weapon state. Trump’s challenge to the Mullahs makes that outcome less certain.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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Donald Trump has made the boldest foreign policy decision of his presidency by choosing to tackle Iran’s nuclear ambitions through aggression rather than negotiation.