Trump and Obama in the Oval Office during the transition.
photo by Olivier Douliery
This, including quotes, is based on an NBC News article by Dan De Luce, Shelby Hanssen, and Owen Hayes, concerning the current Iran situation under President Trump.
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"To supporters of the Iran nuclear deal, it's no surprise that President Donald Trump is now facing a potential war with Iran. Long before Trump was elected, advocates of the nuclear agreement — including then-President Barack Obama, French President Emmanuel Macron and others — had argued that abandoning the accord carried grave risks that could lead to an armed conflict."'So let's not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war — maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon," Obama said in a speech in 2015 defending the deal before a congressional vote.
"Trump as a candidate vowed to dump what he called 'the worst deal ever' and he made good on his promise in 2018. A year later, Trump is openly discussing the pros and cons of bombing Iran.
"On Friday, the president said in a tweet that he had ordered and then called off military strikes against Iran after Tehran shot down a U.S. surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz.
"In his 2015 speech, Obama said that without an agreement limiting Iran's nuclear program in return for sanctions relief, any U.S. administration would be left with only one option to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon — 'another war in the Middle East.' . . . .
"'Does anyone really doubt that the same voices now raised against this deal will be demanding that whoever is president bomb those nuclear facilities?' Obama said.
At the time, Republican opponents of the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the JCPOA, dismissed the idea that the alternative to the deal was waging war on Iran. Macron and other European leaders repeatedly urged Trump not to abandon the agreement, and voiced concern that the collapse of the accord carried dangers for an already volatile region.
"At the U.N. General Assembly in 2017, the French president warned that jettisoning the deal 'without anything to replace it would be a grave mistake.' And he added that the agreement was 'essential to peace, at a time when the risk of an infernal spiral cannot be ruled out.'
"Macron issued a more dire warning a year later as Trump was poised to abandon the agreement. 'That would mean opening Pandora's box, it could mean war,' Macron told the German magazine Der Spiegel. But he added, 'I don't believe that Donald Trump wants war.'
"U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in May 2018 that the nuclear agreement was an 'important diplomatic victory' and that discarding it without presenting an alternative would place the Middle East 'in a very dangerous position.' German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a decision by Trump to withdraw from the nuclear deal might lead to the collapse of the agreement and possibly trigger a regional war, Axios reported last year.
"After Trump announced his decision on May 8, 2018, to withdraw the United States from the nuclear accord, Obama repeated his warning about the consequences of doing so. 'Without the JCPOA, the United States could eventually be left with a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East.' Obama said . . . .
". . . . [Hillary] Clinton said Trump's approach to the issue was reckless. . . .The former head of U.S. Central Command, U.S. Army Gen. Joseph Votel, told senators at a hearing in March 2018 that . . . it was not clear how that would be addressed if Washington pulled out. . . ."
"'The JCPOA addresses one of the principle threats that we deal with from Iran, so if the JCPOA goes away, then we will have to have another way to deal with their nuclear weapons program,' Votel said."
"It's widely known that Trump is obsessed with undoing President Obama's accomplishments in office, as well as trying to undermine him in any way possible -- from questioning his birthplace to trying to destroy Obamacare and the international accords.
"Yet it remains true: whatever Trump has been able to tear down, he has also been unable to put anything better in its place. USMCA as a replacement for NAFTA (North America Free Trade Act) is little more than a name change, for example. Changes Trump and Republicans have brought about in Obamacare have made it worse, more likely to fail, not better. Immigration? Even the economic gains are in line with changes that began under Obama.
"As to foreign policy and our standing as world leader, Trump's obsession with being the Anti-Obama has been a disaster. Destroying the Iran agreement is perhaps the most dangerous -- which, characteristically, Trump is trying to use to promote himself as a decisive leader and the essential commander-in-chief as we go into the re-election campaign. It is so very much the opposite. He proves every day that he is not fit for the job. "
He has no concept of the history of their present government, which is the result of a revolution which came into power as a result of our assisting in the overthrow of the democratically elected socialist government back in the 1970s. Our leaders at the time couldn't tolerate the idea of a socialist in control of all that oil -- so we helped overturn that government and install the autocratic Shah, who was later overthrown in another revolution that put the religious clerics and the military in power.
So, when the Iranian people chant "Death to America" in the streets, we at least should pause for a moment to think about what we have done to their country and their government through the years and what responsibility we bear -- instead of strutting around with cocky self-assurance that we are always in the right.
But Donald Trump is incapable of doing anything but strut and boast and attack. It is said that he is thoroughly enjoying the power he exerted, first, in approving the airstrike -- and then in bucking his generals in aborting it. So now, he's strutting and boasting that he is the compassionate one because he decided not to kill 150 people.
Compassionate people do not have to boast about being compassionate, Donald.
Ralph
"As to foreign policy and our standing as world leader, Trump's obsession with being the Anti-Obama has been a disaster. Destroying the Iran agreement is perhaps the most dangerous -- which, characteristically, Trump is trying to use to promote himself as a decisive leader and the essential commander-in-chief as we go into the re-election campaign. It is so very much the opposite. He proves every day that he is not fit for the job. "
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He has no concept of the history of their present government, which is the result of a revolution which came into power as a result of our assisting in the overthrow of the democratically elected socialist government back in the 1970s. Our leaders at the time couldn't tolerate the idea of a socialist in control of all that oil -- so we helped overturn that government and install the autocratic Shah, who was later overthrown in another revolution that put the religious clerics and the military in power.
So, when the Iranian people chant "Death to America" in the streets, we at least should pause for a moment to think about what we have done to their country and their government through the years and what responsibility we bear -- instead of strutting around with cocky self-assurance that we are always in the right.
But Donald Trump is incapable of doing anything but strut and boast and attack. It is said that he is thoroughly enjoying the power he exerted, first, in approving the airstrike -- and then in bucking his generals in aborting it. So now, he's strutting and boasting that he is the compassionate one because he decided not to kill 150 people.
Compassionate people do not have to boast about being compassionate, Donald.
Ralph
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