10/12/2017—The Iranian Agreement is only an Executive Branch action, not a treaty. President Obama entered into it. Therefore, as far as I know, President Trump could leave it today. Trump says it is a bad deal. So, why not leave it just as he left the Paris climate change agreement?
What Trump plans to do instead, apparently, is to report to Congress that Iran is not in compliance with the agreement.
By all accounts, that is a lie. Iran is in compliance with the Nuclear Agreement. Iran has ended its program to produce nuclear weapons.
The reason could be to trigger statutory provisions that enable Congress to reimpose sanctions on Iran. But Trump could leave the deal on his own and then ask Congress for additional sanctions. He doesn’t need to lie.
I think he is lying because he does not think the truth will work. If Trump were to say, Iran is complying with the deal but the deal allows Iran to support terrorism and the lack of sanctions gives Iran more resources to do so—which is the basis of claiming it is a bad deal—any sane person would say that without the deal, Iran will do the same things and will also pursue a nuclear bomb. After all, that is what Iran was doing before entering the deal. Most people would see that leaving the deal would only make everything worse. And that is especially obvious now with North Korea’s nuclear program.
So, lying is better public relations.
But this kind of fantasy world, in which people can say anything they want, even if the facts are otherwise, is the sickness that is affecting us. When I said to a friend of mine who voted for Trump but does not like him that Trump was lying, he was not outraged. Essentially he said, they all lie.
In just this way the truth dies.
In a better world, our politicians could not get away with lies. Disagreements would remain—maybe the Iranian deal is a bad one and it is Trump’s call anyway—but there are things we would agree on.
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