(Wall Street Journal) Michael Doran - President Trump faces on Thursday a legislatively mandated deadline to waive or reimpose sanctions on Iran. However, he does have a third alternative: fixing the deal. As he suggested in October, he and Congress could eliminate the nuclear deal's sunset clauses - its most dangerous provisions - by making restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program permanent in U.S. law and requiring more robust inspections. Failure by the Iranians to comply with such a law would bring about an immediate snap-back of the most debilitating sanctions. The administration has been conducting quiet conversations with Capitol Hill about such an approach, which offers the possibility of forging a new bipartisan consensus on Iran. While the nuclear deal prevents the administration from reconstituting the previous sanctions regime, it does not preclude new sanctions designed to curb Iran's ballistic missile programs, its human rights abuses, and its malevolent behavior abroad. The first priority of the administration should be to forge a new containment coalition. The writer is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
2018-01-10 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive