如何评价美国总统特朗普退出《伊朗核协议》？

川普的逻辑：为了不让伊朗在未来10年内能开始核武器研究，我们要让伊朗现在就能够开始核武器研究。

黑人问号.jpg

短期来看对美国有无利益？无，伊朗可以马上开始核武器研究，禁止联合国视察员进入等等。

中期来看对美国有无利益？无，盟国全部反对，IAEA也表示伊朗在遵守协议，那么主动违约的便是美国这一方，先不说形象上的损失和盟国关系的裂痕，和伊朗重新恢复贸易的损失也不是一小笔。伊朗除非是傻子，才会和已经爽约过一次的人再签订合约。同时美国也会损失和伊朗的生意，伊朗有可能拥有核武器。

长期来看对美国有无利益？无，以后所有国家和美国签订合约的时候都要考虑到这个合约的有效期实际上只和该总统的任期相关，变相彻底毁灭了不止是川普，乃至后续至少数届总统的国家信誉。

真要说川普为什么要这么做，很简单，他根本什么都不懂，只知道只要是奥巴马遗留下来的政治遗产，哪怕对美国再有利，对世界再有利，都要给移除了。从巴黎和会到奥巴马医改再到DACA，伊朗核协议不过只是最新的一个而已。

As a European, I am unhappy, to say it politely

I am a German, my wife is French, I live partially in Germany, partially in France. I have lived 1 year in Spain, 1 year in Switzerland.

So you might consider me a European.

I can tell you that the opinion of what just happened here in Europe is unusually unanimous:

• Given Trumps campaign promise and other behavior, this is no surprise, but that doesn't make it better.
• Nobody here wants to see Iran having nuclear weapons, although I permit myself to just ask the question who and with what right decides who on this plant can have or can not have nuclear weapons. The laws of nature apply to us all. If it were for the "patented" discovery of nuclear fission, Germany would have the monopoly (discovery 1938, Nobel prize 1944).
• But the international alliance placed their own security above fairness, and the truth is that I also prefer as few states as possible to have this terrible weapon
• Then an alliance of the permanent member of the UN security council (UNSC) : China , Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus temporary member Germany, negotiated an unusual agreement with Iran. After many years of sanctions and isolation, a formula was found under the acronym name of JCPOA.
• I don't want to get into the technical details like "non-prolongation of the suspension of sanctions" etc.
  I want to name this by what it is: President Trump did not "pull out" or "withdrew" from a "deal". He "broke a contract". It is that simple.
• Important side note: North Korea is paying attention. Who wants to make "deals" or contracts with people / states / leaders who don't feel bound by them, but "withdraw" whenever they feel like it? No matter Obama or Trump administration: It was the US who agreed. A contract for 10 years and longer must survive several administrations.
• Now, the USA tries to bully their way to new sanctions, e.g. the newly appointed US ambassador to Germany: First, the US Foreign Department was unable to name somebody for the job for many months. Now, basically as first action ever, this ambassador almost commands that German companies should end their activities in Iran within 90 days. Same in France, of course. That is outrageous! We have not broken the contract!
• Germany as of today has only ~3 or 3.5 billion € trade volume with Iran, that is ~ 0,2% of our foreign trade.
  
  If German companies stay on, those with US activities will be punished in the US, and business there is usually many times larger.
  
  Should the US force those who have not broken the contract, to break it too?
  
  Will China cut 1 of the 6 central corridors of the One Belt one Road initiative, passing right through Tehran?
  
  

• More importantly, Iran has not broken the contract. According to all international oversight activities, Iran complied 100%

So why does Trump break it?

1. As sad as this seems, Trump is out to eliminate any legacy that Obama left.
   As with Obamacare, though, he seems to pretty blank when it comes to the alternative.
   First kick everything in, then start thinking about plan B.
2. The Iran deal, like the Mexico wall or eliminating Obama-Care, was on his campaign agenda. In principle, it's positive if the candidate sticks to his promises. More often than not, democratic politicians don't do that, and than how is democracy supposed to work?
3. As pretty much all that Trump does, it is directed at national approval by American voters. The rest of the planet is not his concern. Paris Climate Agreements? -> America First! Trade war with China and Europe? -> America First!
   Sad but true: The average American voter wouldn't even know to locate Iran on a map. I've lived there 2 years, from Florida over California to Michigan. And those are the good parts. I am not even thinking of the Mid-West.
4. There is a leadership principle as old as humanity: If you have internal problems, raise external problems. If you don't have any, than create them, pick a fight. A trade war in a mild case, or a real war, if you have to. Bismarck united Germany by leading 3 wars. You can observe the effect every day: There is a "deadly" rivalry between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid? Just watch how all Spaniards, including Catalan, will cheer for Spain in the upcoming world cup.
   Trump is under severe pressure from the Mueller Probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Stormy Daniels probe which has long since become a much more serious scandal around his personal lawyer Michale Cohen etc.
   What better then to fill the news with US citizens liberated by North Korea or showing how tough you are on a Middle Eastern country?
5. His own team is divided. He thinks he can negotiate a more advantageous "deal". But a very key capital in negotiations is trustworthiness. Trump just lost whatever credibility he might have had left.
   He alienated all his allies (for Europe I can speak with great confidence).
   He gave Iran's government a taste of how reliable the US is as a partner. It would not be so surprising if the regime there decided that an own atomic bomb was the best life insurance after all. And if it is not the more moderate government of Hassan Rouhani, the hardliners are never far away in Iran.
   Nobody should have the illusion that the compromise, which is at the heart of every contract, did not get criticized in Iran.
   Trump, at heart, is non-interventionist, for isolation of America.
   So for him, the renewed sanctions must do the trick. But they haven't over decades.
6. Not AT ALL in the same logic is his newly appointed National Security Advisor John Bolton. Bolton advocate the Irak war, and EVEN today, when the presumed weapons of mass destruction were never found in Irak, and the aftermath has left a country in constant civil war and given rise to the IS, is STILL convinced this was right (he only deplores the US did not go in earlier, with more troops, and stay longer).
   He also advocated preemptive strikes on North Korea, and argued that this was legal.
   We in Europe have a US-induced wave of refugees. You will easily understand where refugees from North Korea would go, should the country be attacked by the US.
   
   An most importantly in this context, Mr. Bolton advocates "regime change" in Iran. He does not think a better deal can be struck. And I don't believe, he thinks that the current (democratically elected) President Hassan Rouhani will simply leave office (and who, by the way, is the most moderate and pro-western president in recent Iranian history).
7. Israel. Israel has told the world many times that it wants the Iran deal to destroyed. It has shown to the world, with its "coincidental" timing of the finding of OLD material from the time before the JCPOA deal was struck, what it wanted to happen.
   It has proven in the past that it prefers to take things into its own MILITARY hand, e.g. when it destroyed reactors in Syria and Irak before.
   
   What strikes me as very hypocrite in all this is the fact that Israel is widely believed to have the atomic bomb since 1966. And not 1, but 80-400 warheads, which might make it the 3rd largest arsenal in the world.
   Of course Israel refused to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

Sow what is next?

Behind all this, I can see mainly one possible outcome: The US will impose sanctions, with or without help from others, in the hopes that Iran will re-start its nuclear program.
At that moment, the US (and Israel most likely), will strike in a bid to destroy whatever nuclear infrastructure there is, in the name of self-defense, hoping to thrown Iran further back than any contract could ever have.

This is the law of the stronger, bare and simple. Throw all morale, laws or fairness overboard.
That is exactly what John Bolton stands for, and he is proud about it. He doesn't even try to hide it. Listen to him talk for yourself.

However, there is always a flip-side to the coin:
If there is something that makes terrorism very likely, it is the asymmetrical war of this kind, where any confrontation at eye level is unthinkable.
Bomb Iran, and no moderate politician will be able to hold back angry fighters.

If there is another civil war (As in Afghanistan, or in Irak), after US interventions, in a struggle for power after one regime has been eliminated, the next refugee crisis is on it's way, and it's not going to the US.

So now, when I hear the news, read the papers, and read what the normal people comment, I can see one positive element in all this: Ordinary Germans realize that on the world stage, they are too insignificant to really matter. They ask for more European integration, to form a common entity which in number of people and GDP is at eye level at least with the US. Only then we can deal with people like Trump and Bolton, who feel that "the law of the jungle", the "law of the stronger" is the only law.