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What Trump Should Do with the Iran Deal

(Fathom-BICOM) Emily Landau - There is a growing group of experts who are critical of the Iran nuclear deal but are not advocating that it be renounced by the new administration. At the heart of this view is the need to make the best of a bad situation. Problematic provisions of the deal must be clarified, better defined, and strengthened. Ambiguities must be cleared up and issues that have purposely been swept under the rug must be brought to light and aired. In order to sell the deal, the administration misled the American public by presenting the choice as between this deal or war, and hinted that a deal with Iran could very well engender better U.S.-Iran relations, although there was no sign that this was a realistic expectation. The Obama administration played up Iran's (minimal) cooperation while ignoring or explaining away its regional aggression. The more the administration acquiesced to Iran, the stronger Iran has become. The U.S. must stop playing the role of Iran's lawyer and defender, and begin holding it to the terms of the deal, while responding firmly to Iran's aggressive regional behavior. If there is no change in Iran's basic behavior, the JCPOA restrictions should not be lifted according to an arbitrary timetable, as there is no reason to believe that Iran would not go back to doing precisely what it was doing before the deal. The writer heads the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv.
2016-12-16 00:00:00
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