The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

OUR VIEW

Posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 03:00 PM

OUR VIEW: President Trump's Decision To Nuke Iran Deal Another Pull Of The Lever Washing Obama Legacy Away

That's not even beginning to talk about efforts to dismantle the hideous and disastrous Obamacare while making drastic changes to U.S. immigration and military policies.

In his address to the nation announcing the pullout, Trump said the Iran deal had been “so poorly negotiated that even if Iran fully complies, the regime can still be on the verge of a nuclear breakout in just a short period of time.”

That is correct. Under this deal, in as little as eight years all sanctions would be lifted and all bets would be off on how quick Iran would find a way to become a nuclear juggernaut in the Middle East.

But on Tuesday we saw first hand that a US president was and is pushing back on Iran’s dangerous and growing power.

While the left has jeered the decision to shred Team Obama’s badly flawed Iran deal and re-impose sanctions on the world's leader in exporting terrorism, it sent a clear message to the mullahs: The jig’s up.

As stated, the agreement left Iran free to develop nukes within a decade, even as Washington unfroze billions in Iranian assets and lifted sanctions that had left the regime gasping. And it let Tehran keep developing ever-more-deadly and longer-range missiles.

More, it encouraged Iran’s inflaming of conflicts across the region and expanding its influence at the expense of US allies.

Now US sanctions will return in coming months, leaving companies in Europe and elsewhere with the choice of doing business with Iran or the United States. Other measures against the country’s Central Bank will make it tough to do business even with companies that are still willing.

And sanctions related to insurance will make it far harder to ship Iranian oil — Tehran’s chief source of foreign money.

This, when the regime already faces mass protests over the fact that it devoted the cash freed up by the deal not to domestic needs but to its military and its foreign adventurism, puts the country's economic future in peril. With its currency already collapsing, can it risk fresh confrontation?

Indeed, while Tehran talked tough in the run up to Trump’s announcement, its immediate reaction was not to restart its programs or turn inspectors away, but to seek talks with Europe, Russia and China about preserving the deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, called for negotiations to strengthen the deal enough to bring the United States back in — by addressing all the flaws Trump has flagged.

This, when the Obama crew had insisted this was the best accord anyone could get — though it denied inspectors full access to Iran’s military sites and, again, left it free to openly resume its nuke work in a few years.

Far better to wipe the slate clean now, and begin working to stop Iran before it grows stronger.

“America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail,” said Trump. Hear, hear.

Pundits and journalists on the left decried the move however, claiming the real blackmail in this was done by Israel and Saudi Arabia, both bitter enemies of Iran,  in pressuring the United States to make this decision.

New York Times journalist Roger Cohen, who wrote, "In truth, Trump was led to this decision not by any serious calculus about the deal, but by his susceptibility to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi fury at Iran, the pressure of conservative American Jews who support him and his iron principle that whatever Obama did must be bad. He succumbed to Iran derangement syndrome, a well-known American condition.

Mr. Cohen the only "deraignment syndrome" in this nation is the "Trump" variety that you and your left wing loons and retards show every day by your disdain for the truth.

In Cohen's article he said a Saudi foreign minister told him, “We want Iran to be a good neighbor. We want Iran to comply with international law. We want Iran to stop interfering in the affairs of Arab countries. We want Iran to stop supporting terrorists. We want Iran to stop harboring terrorists. We want Iran to stop attacking our embassies, to stop killing our diplomats. We want Iran to not give ballistic missiles to terrorist groups. Simple. Once they do it, it’s a different Iran.”

I don't see any derangement syndrome in those statements. I see nothing but a nation seeking to be at peace, something the left has never understood!

Cohen said that the president's actions showed that America's words were worthless.  Mr. Cohen is dead wrong.

It's the leaders of Iran's words that have always been worthless. In fact, many of their words over the years have also proved hateful and destructive to human rights. Those words have then in turn frequently spawned hostile acts toward women, gays, and pretty much any segment of the global population that declines to view the world through the eyes of their Islamic hope of dominating the world and killing Jews and Christians. Israel will always be the little "satan" and America, the great "satan" in the eyes of the Shiites.

To Mr. Cohen's point of President Trump hating everything that President Obama did I'd say this. The things that President Trump has corrected from the Obama years was bad policy and bad for the nation! To liberals these things weren't, but to scores of Americans, they were destroying our nation.

Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has repealed or rescinded dozens of regulations, executive orders and international agreements implemented by the Obama administration over the eight years of his presidency.

What took place Tuesday was another push on the lever of draining this sewage we know as the Obama legacy.

I actually love the sound that makes. With each decision President Trump makes like this, the fresher the air smells and the cleaner this nation's landscape looks.

Despite the predictions, let me assure you that the sound of President Obama's legacy being flushed down the toilet by President Trump is the only "blue wave" that is coming for America. It'll be totally gone soon. Not quick enough.

To Iran, I'd urge the mullahs to take note. There's a new sheriff in town. Your hayday of lies and subterfuge are over. There will be no more midnight runs on the airport tarmac to the tune of $150B. America is back and you're days of exporting terrorism around the world are over. That too is the sound of Israel and America both taking a breath of fresh air. Well done, Mr. President, well done.

Christopher McDonald, Publisher, Editor in Charge

Great Smoky Mountain Journal