Worrisome Response by Iran to the United States

Yesterday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani responded to the threat by his counterpart in the United States, Donald Trump, to leave the Iranian nuclear agreement, which was signed in July 2015 by that Asian country with China, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and Germany.

Under the accord, Tehran committed to limiting its nuclear program to peaceful uses in exchange for a progressive lifting of the international sanctions that had been imposed on it.

The leader of the Islamic Republic warned that if Washington turns its back on the pact, it will feel regret as never before in its history, and claimed that in Iranian society, every political movement, right-wing, left-wing, conservative, reformist or moderate, was united.

Last week, the president of the United States showed signs of pulling his government out of the agreement with Tehran, which he has repeatedly denigrated since he was a presidential candidate as being too soft on Iran, and set a deadline of the May 12 for his European allies to toughen the conditions imposed on Iran.*

Trump’s demand is obviously impossible to meet, but the signatories to the accord could not, even if they wanted to, change it unilaterally without Iran’s consent.

Keeping that detail in mind, it must be concluded that either the New York real estate magnate has already decided to break the agreement and is simply formulating a pretext to do so, or that the subject of the nuclear pact with Iran is a way to pressure his allies, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, in other areas, possibly trade.

These hypotheses are strengthened by the contrast between the attitude of the White House toward Iran and its attitude toward North Korea, a country with which, after months of brinksmanship and threats of war by both parties, Washington is approaching rapprochement.

It is appropriate to point out that, just like the Islamic Republic, the North Korean regime developed nuclear technology independently, but, unlike the Iranians, Pyongyang has used it for the manufacture of atomic weapons, which, according to all the available information, are part of the nation’s operational arsenal.

If even under those conditions, Trump showed his willingness to meet the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, at the end of the month, he should have even better reasons to show tolerance for Tehran’s nuclear program aimed at peaceful ends.

That being the case, the American president’s broadside against the nuclear agreement with Iran seems to be one of his well-known maneuvers to obtain benefits elsewhere.

But coming from the head of state of the greatest military power on earth, that type of move represents an element of danger. It is destabilizing and counterproductive because it could lead the Iranian government to start a program for manufacturing nuclear arms, and because, in the end, the war against Iraq in 2003 demonstrated that Washington is capable of using the pretext of the weapons of mass destruction to devastate countries that do not have them.

*Editor’s note: President Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran nuclear deal, on May 8, 2018.

ountries that do not have them.