Democrats clinging to this type of thinking around Iran “deal”

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Trump claimed in his televised speech today that Iran is cheating on the deal, but his own intelligence directors have said there is no evidence of this claim whatsoever. The International Atomic Energy Agency has certified Iran’s compliance 10 times since the deal was signed. Secretary of Defense James Mattis testified to a Senate committee last month that, after reading the 140-page agreement three times, he was struck by how “robust” the deal’s verification provisions were.

It’s also the case that the most influential backers of Trump’s decision—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton, and the Sunni Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia—are fervent advocates of regime change in Iran, by force if necessary.


From early on in his presidential campaign, Trump promised to kill the accord, which he has repeatedly called “the worst deal” ever “drawn up by anybody.” Here is where ignorance enters the picture. As evidence of his charge, Trump used to claim that the deal required us to pay Iran $100 billion—when, in fact, it merely required us to return Iranian assets that we’d frozen. (Also the $100 billion is a rough estimate of assets frozen not just by the U.S. but worldwide.) Far from a bad deal, this seemed like a fair trade: We had frozen their assets as punishment for their illegal nuclear program; therefore, in exchange for dismantling the program, we would unfreeze the assets.

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