Iran Focus
London, 27 Jan – Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has said that a high priority for discussion with US President Trump is tackling aggression from Iran. He is due to meet with President Trump next month.
The reason for this is because the Iran nuclear deal has increased its plans to control the region. Although the deal was to suspend its nuclear weapons program for several years, it is actually just giving Iran time to develop and expand its centrifuge capability.
As claimed by Obama, the Iran is not being run by moderates. It is a theocracy that is pretending to be a legitimate part of the world community. It is hostile despite many concessions given to it. In fact, it could be said that the regime becomes even more aggressive and disruptive with concessions.
Obama made great efforts to appease Iran and this was frequently at the expense of American foreign policy which often became subordinate to the deal. He desperately wanted a legacy on leaving the White House.
Wall Street Journal reporter, Jay Solomon, wrote an insightful book into the Iran and its relationship with America. In ‘The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East’, Solomon explains that there is a telling money-trail. Obama gave the regime hundreds of millions of dollars every month in exchange for talking – something that could help stabilise the economy of Iran.
He said that Obama ended up offering a deal that basically permitted (in a legal sense) uranium, plutonium and ballistic missile work on a certain timescale.
Solomon adds that Obama crucially neglected to make Iran come clean about earlier incidents of cheating regarding its nuclear program.
Other benefits of the nuclear deal for Iran were the hundred billion dollars it made available as well as the business deals that came as a result of the agreement. Many terrorists in Iran also had restrictions removed.
Because of all this, the leverage the US had over Iran in the form of powerful sanctions disappeared. So over ten years’ worth of effort to get Iran under control, the Obama administration managed to overturn.
Now it is up to President Trump to try and regain some of this leverage. The problem now is that Iran’s footprint has extended across the Middle East. It is in Syria and has no plans to leave because it is a front line against Israel. Trump must remove all foreign forces from Iran immediately, and with the help of Putin.
If Iran is bold enough to pour resources into developing long-range ballistic missiles and carry out missile testing despite having promised to stop its nuclear plans, what else is it bold enough to do? It is possible, and many claim it is true, that the $1.7 billion that was flown in cash to Iran has been spent on funding missile and nuclear weapons research in North Korea.
The best hope of stopping this is by the Trump administration stopping Iran, pulling it out of other regions and re-imposing sanctions. Loophole in the deal need to be closed and penalties should be fixed for breaches of the deal.
