US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy continues to be marked by recklessness
The Nuclear Deal signed between the Islamic Republic of Iran and major world powers, including the United States, was considered a masterpiece of diplomacy. The deal would have ensured that Iran gave up its quest to acquire nuclear weapons and would get fully reintegrated back into the global economy, something it had not been able to do in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution led by Ayotallah Khomeni. Undoubtedly, Iran drove a hard bargain as the country had become accustomed to the harsh sanctions regime; it got the world to give them a good deal. But Iran needed that deal as well, the sanctions were hurting its people, airlines for example operated 30-year old planes as they were unable to buy new aircraft with American components, and almost every Western-built aircraft has American components which led to Iranian airlines buying old, inefficient planes or Russian-built aircraft. This led to Iran having one of the highest rates of civilian aircraft crashes in the world. Unable to establish new refineries for the lack of technology, Iran became a net importer of refined petrochemical products, an irony for a nation floating on oil and gas.
The fact about aircraft also highlights how the recent announcement by Donald Trump to actively ‘fix’ the deal after calling it ‘the worst’ deal’ signed by America will impact the United States. American aircraft manufacturer Boeing promptly sold the Islamic Republic 80 aircraft worth $8 billion after the deal was signed and had follow-up orders worth another $9 billion. American companies saw Iran, a middle-income country, as a massive market for their products and services particularly technology companies. While the Trump Administration has handed the deal over to the US Congress to explore how to extricate the United States from the deal, a dangerous precedent has been established.
A multilateral deal signed and certified by various Governments should not be subject to the whims of one man. While Iran benefited from the deal, the Trump Administration seems to have succumbed to pressure from the Saudi Arabian Government which is fighting a proxy war with Iran in Yemen, and against the Iranian-backed Hizbollah and Hamas militants. There is also little doubt that Iran has backed the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus. But reintegrating Iran into the global union of nations would have been far better than to make it a pariah state again. Yes, Trump has a point about the undemocratic Iranian regime being a destablising force across the region, but that ignores the role that other countries in the region have played in the destablisation particularly US ally Saudi Arabia. One can only hope that with the US Congress increasingly growing a spine and refusing to yield to whims and fancies of this US President, the deal is not ‘fired’.