The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

Staff Reports

Posted: Sunday, January 21, 2018 06:33 PM

OUR VIEW: 10/14/2017 - President Trump Right To Decertify Deal With World's Largest Exporter Of Terror

Case in point is the Iran Nuke deal this week when President Trump was right to sharply criticize the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran Friday and say that Congress and other nations must set stricter conditions for Iranian behavior in order to keep the U.S. from withdrawing from the pact.

"However, in the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,” President Trump said. “It is under continuous review and our participation can be canceled by me as president at any time. As we have seen in North Korea, the longer we ignore a threat, the worse that threat becomes."

Some would have preferred President Trump announce a clean withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, but his decision to give Congress and European leaders a final chance to fix it is the middle ground in this debacle created by former President Barrack Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry.

European leaders and Russia screamed to the heavens after it was announced Friday defending Iran's "character" and claiming it has kept its end of the bargain. Don't believe a word of it. The chances of Iran's doing anything to keep a treaty and not continue to export terrorism while seeking Israel's destruction is at best remote.

President Trump should be applauded for calling out Iran for its sponsorship of terrorism, missile program and efforts to destabilize the Middle East. He explained clearly and accurately why the agreement designed to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons is in reality weak and dangerous.

The president’s compelling description of the growing threat from Iran explained why the Israeli and Saudi governments immediately endorsed his action. Of course it's the same reason that America's liberal community and yes, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, railed against it. In the mind of Democrats anything that threatens America and Israel is good while anything that promotes and protects America is always racist and bad in their world view.

President Trump’s ultimatum was the most important part of his speech, since he announced that he will kill the agreement unless its many flaws are fixed. Given the low probability that Congress, U.S. diplomats or European officials can devise and implement any substantial changes to the nuclear agreement, the deal’s future is grim.

It’s also worth noting that President Trump himself can reimpose most sanctions on Iran himself if Congress fails to act. The president could take such action and impose additional sanctions as part of a withdrawal decision.

President Trump also deserves a lot of credit in at least trying however, to work with Congress.

Congress now has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose severe economic sanctions on Iran that were lifted by the nuclear agreement. Congress also will consider legislation on how to address the agreement’s shortcomings and “triggers” imposing sanctions in response to Iranian behavior.

The reality is though Congress is very unlikely to pass legislation with any substantial fixes to the agreement because too many moderate Republican senators will vote with Democrats against changes that could cause Iran to withdraw. The Senate would require 60 votes to pass such legislation, meaning that even if all 52 Republicans supported it they would need to pick up eight Democratic votes.

Based on a statement by senior European Union officials Friday, European states plan to stubbornly resist any efforts by U.S. officials to fix the nuclear deal.

By not withdrawing from the pact immediately, President Trump is actually following the law. This is the opposite of how President Obama imposed the nuclear agreement on the American people by refusing to follow the U.S. Constitution and submitting the pact to the Senate for ratification as a treaty. To say that such a far-reaching international agreement is not a treaty was an absurd claim by the former president.

You’ll see many pundits and members of Congress on the talk show circuit this weekend discussing various schemes to fix the nuclear deal. Ignore their hot air. This deal cannot be fixed. You can't deal faithfully with unfaithful terrorist-sponsoring nations who scream "death to America," and "death to Israel" on daily basis. Iran is an evil regime and nothing the liberal media can say or do will change that.

The nuclear deal with Iran is all but dead. In about two months, President Trump hopefully will put the Iran deal out of its misery and fulfill another one of many promises he made on the campaign trail. President Trump didn't write the "Art of the Deal" for nothing. He knows what a bad deal looks like and when it's time to put America first, not the elite globalists who want to destroy her.

President Trump did the right thing Friday in a list of many right things he continues to do. You won't hear that on the Fake News channels. You will here at the Great Smoky Mountain Journal.

 

Christopher McDonald, Publisher, Editor in Charge

Great Smoky Mountain Journal

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