The status of the Iran nuclear deal is uncertain after Donald Trump was elected president Tuesday night in a massive upset. Unlike some of the challengers he faced in the GOP primary,
Trump said he would not rip up the deal on his first day in office.
Instead, he promised to enforce the deal so strictly that it will fall
apart on its own.
Walid Phares, a foreign policy advisor to Trump’s campaign, said over the summer that Trump will “renegotiate” the deal, but not get rid of it.
“You know, I’ve taken over some bad contracts. I buy contracts where people screwed up and they have bad contracts,” Trump said in August.
“But I’m really good at looking at a contract and finding things within
a contract that, even if they’re bad, I would police that contract so
tough that they don’t have a chance. As bad as the contract is, I will
be so tough on that contract.” The difficulty in doing so is that some parts of the deal have
already been carried out and will be difficult to undo, like the $100
billion in sanctions relief that has been granted.
“It’s like a toddler, where you let them eat dessert first and
then you come ask them to eat their spinach. Iran’s already got its
dessert,” said Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute. The nuclear deal with Iran, which Obama negotiated last year,
aims to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but critics say it
doesn’t go far enough since it still allows for uranium enrichment and
only lasts for about a decade. But supporters say that while it may not
be a perfect deal, it does at least delay Iran from getting a nuclear
weapon.
Michael O’Hanlon, an analyst with the Brookings institution,
said it’s still unclear how Trump will address the deal once in office. “He has a huge choice to make on that. It’s one of the
bellweather issues — does he really want to be a huge disrupter on
American foreign policy or will he pick his battles (so to speak) very
selectively, focusing instead on the economic agenda? I don’t think we
can know yet,” he said.
