Trump’s Iran view is blurred, but deal could be scrapped

Enforce the Iran deal. Violate the Iran deal. Leave it to Congress. Do nothing.

Donald Trump will have an array of options when he assumes the presidency on Jan. 20. What he will choose to do is unclear.

Trump’s indecision was evident when he spoke in March to the AIPAC policy conference and claimed that he both planned to enforce the deal and to scrap it.

“My No. 1 priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran,” Trump said at the time. Then a few moments later: “We will enforce it like you’ve never seen a contract enforced before, folks, believe me.”

His two top advisers on Israel, David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt, released in the last days of the campaign an Israel position paper — on Jerusalem, Palestinian statehood and settlements — was notably circumspect on the Iran deal.

“The U.S. must counteract Iran’s ongoing violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and their noncompliance with past and present sanctions, as well as the agreements they signed, and implement tough, new sanctions when needed to protect the world and Iran’s neighbors from its continuing nuclear and non-nuclear threats,” said the position paper from the advisers, two longtime lawyers for Trump.

That reluctance to directly confront Iran — “counteract,” not cancel; “when needed,” as opposed to “right now” — could stem from Trump’s professed warmth toward Russia, which is allied with Iran in its bid to crush rebels in Syria, or a realistic desire to keep his options open.

Here are some of the president-elect’s options on Iran:

Silence

The deal essentially is done. Sanctions are lifted, Iran has rolled back its nuclear program. If he doesn’t want a headache, this is one way to go.

Drawbacks: A number of his former rivals for the Republican presidential nomination are back in their Senate seats, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. They hate the deal, they want to be president in 2021 and they’re itching to distinguish themselves from Trump. Trump’s silence on Iran could hand them a huge opening for political disruption.

Declare it dead, move on

Does Trump want to shut up Rubio and Cruz? Just declare the deal dead and do nothing. He ran a campaign successfully navigating the tensions between contradictory declarations and actions — why shouldn’t he get away with the same as president?

Drawbacks: The Iranians can point to a declaration of intent to withdraw in order to drop out of the program themselves and then start enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels.

Scrap the deal

Trump has a number of mechanisms at his disposal that would immediately pull the United States out of the deal. All of them involve restoring an array of sanctions that targeted third parties that deal with Iran. (Direct dealings with Iran, with several exceptions, are still banned for U.S. entities.)

He could simply stop waiving the sanctions already in place according to existing law. Trump could, as President Bill Clinton did in 1995 not long after pro-Israel lobbying shifted to focusing on Iran’s nuclear program, issue an executive order advancing new sanctions. Or he could invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which gives the president broad sanctioning power.

Drawbacks: Any pullback from the Iran deal will raise the question of who is at fault for its collapse. The more proactive the United States is in killing the deal, the likelier that the international partners whose sanctions brought Iran to the table will blame the U.S. and continue trading with Iran, threats be damned.

Moreover, Trump may not have the ability to waive existing sanctions — the most passive option described above. That’s because the Iran Sanctions Act, which authorizes the sanctions, is set to lapse on Dec. 31. Congress broadly agreed that it needs to be reenacted, but there is little time to do so. Moreover, Democrats want a clean reenactment of the original law, no additions, while Republicans want to insert language making it harder for any president to waive the bill’s provisions. They have yet to settle on a compromise. Without renewal, the president would have to use executive action to impose penalties on Iran.

Enforcement 

Worried that the world will turn away from the United States should it pull out? Then make it clear that the Iranians are at fault, say conservatives who oppose the deal.

“He has to start first enforcing it, second doing a bunch of stuff that’s allowed that the [Obama administration] hasn’t been doing,” said Omri Ceren of the Israel Project. “In other words, taking the deal seriously.”

“All that needs to happen for the deal to fall apart is for the Trump White House to do what the Obama administration has refused to do — enforce its provisions,” wrote Lee Smith, advancing a similar argument to Ceren’s in the Weekly Standard.

Drawbacks: Selling the notion to America’s partners that Iran is in violation might be hard.

Let Congress do it

If Congress fails to reauthorize Iran sanctions before it concludes its business, there are any number of Republican senators ready to write new ones. That way, Trump doesn’t get blamed for walking away from the deal.

Drawbacks: Democrats will likely filibuster any new legislation.

“There will be fights, and these will be fights J Street and other supporters of the deal will engage in with everything we’ve got,” said Dylan Williams, J Street’s vice president of government affairs.

And perhaps, from Trump’s perspective, that’s not a drawback: He satisfies hard-liners by encouraging them to come up with the toughest anti-deal legislation possible – and then watches it wither on the vine.