JAMAL ABDI: I think it’s very difficult for any party to trust that the United States will keep its word on an agreement. And you know, you had some examples of this already affecting the talks with North Korea. You know, when John Bolton came out and said that he, you know, they envision a Libya model for North Korea that sort of evoked the memories of Libya giving up its WMD capabilities and then (Moammar) Kaddafi being toppled. And the United States supporting his, his toppling. And so you already have that sort of as a backdrop. With Iran, you actually have a situation where we were in the midst of an agreement and that Iran was fully upholding. The latest IEA, you know, international inspector’s report just came out a couple of days ago and confirms Iran was completely compliant with the nuclear deal. And so I think that this, you know, for any rational actor, this raises serious concerns about how much the U.S. can actually be relied on.
Now, on an interesting note, Trump has actually said that he, unlike Obama with the Iran deal, he plans to submit an agreement with North Korea to the Senate for ratification. And this is the big criticism of how Obama secured the Iran deal. There was no ratification process. It did go before Congress. Congress had an opportunity to vote it down through this sort of unique mechanism that was passed into law specifically for the Iran deal, but that did not codify the Iran deal into law. It did not qualify it as a treaty. And so opponents of the deal criticized it for that and Trump being the, you know, the anti-Obama has even said for this North Korea deal, unlike the Iran deal, which he supposedly is completely justified in backing out of, this is going to be a treaty. And I, I think that that’s a, that’s going to be a tall order, but it does show the difference in style at least where Obama, you know, spent, you know, over nearly three years in negotiations with Iran in a very carefully crafted agreement and sort of needed to navigate the domestic politics, which made it really difficult to strike this deal because there were very powerful U.S. domestic interests lobbying against it as well as outside – you know, foreign interests lobbying against it.
And so he ended up striking the Iran deal which was pretty far reaching but did not necessarily offer as many concessions as perhaps could have been positive to do in order to secure more Iranian concessions. You know, so that the deal was only a nuclear deal. It didn’t lift the U.S. embargo – all these things. With Trump, it’s more of a bull in a China shop approach and we’ll see sort of how the domestic politics affect this, but also how his decision to kill the Iran deal ends up influencing the party at the other side of the table as far as the willingness to actually sign on to something that may not actually be a deal that lasts into the next presidency.
BETWEEN THE LINES: There are many observers who look at Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran international nuclear agreement – along with statements from his National Security advisor John Bolton and newly named Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – as revealing that the intention here all along might be to pursue war and regime change in Iran. I’m wondering how likely you think that outcome is and where does the peace movement in the United States come into play here in terms of that very dangerous and deadly option, if that’s indeed what the Trump administration is after?
JAMAL ABDI: I really think that, similar to 2002, 2003 in the lead-up to Iraq, there was this idea that the United States could have a massive invasion and war on the cheap and that this was going to be sold as this very clean operation with limited boots on the ground and we were going to be able to sort of have our cake and eat it, too. Today, I think with Iran, the version of that is this notion that the United States is going to sort of help topple the Iranian regime and that the regime is so close to the brink of collapse that if the United States imposes new sanctions and then potentially does some of the things that John Bolton has talked about, such as a supporting ethnic separatist groups inside of Iran, arming terrorists and things like that to try to destabilize the country – and that is somehow a way the United States can actually take this “bad actor” off the map without having to pay too high of a cost.
And so I think that the challenge for the peace movement is to really to not wait until it’s too late, until we’ve gone so far down that path that an actual war is inevitable and, you know, you have this administration having sold the American people on this notion that Iran is tied to al Qaeda, which is something, you know, a propaganda point that Mike Pompeo is a big fan of and which is starting to gain traction once again. And it’s complete nonsense. But I really think for the peace movement, it’s going to be a matter of standing up now and pulling this stuff out now and not allowing this to get so far down the road that we’re unable to actually stop it.
