A year after completion of the agreement in Geneva, Raymond Tanter considers its faults, the White House’s failure to enforce it, and what a new president can do. In particular, he notes that the UN resolution designed to ratify the nuclear deal replaced an earlier resolution firmly prohibiting Iran’s ballistic-missile program with a polite request. And that’s only for starters:
The Obama administration failed to hold Tehran accountable for nuclear violations [prior to the deal or since]. But the appeasement of Iran is also tied to state sponsorship of terrorism. In selling the nuclear deal, the administration expressed a hope and implied an expectation that Tehran would moderate its participation in terrorism, for which it has quite a history. . . . [Subsequent] interviews with President Obama [made clear] his faith that Iran’s terrorism can be moderated, which has not been borne out by the facts. . . .
Even more troubling is the Obama administration’s continued support for sanctions relief, irrespective of Iran’s behavior. . . .
Regardless of who is in the Oval Office [come 2017], he or she could work with our partners to counter Tehran’s provocations. Such actions might include the interdiction of illicit arms shipments and sanctioning terrorism financing by the Iranian regime. There also is a need to fix the gap in the nuclear deal—which offers no agreed-upon penalties for Iranian violations of the deal’s terms, short of the last-resort punishment of a “snapback” of UN sanctions against Iran.
Read more on Foreign Policy: http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/08/the-iran-deal-one-year-in-economic-nuclear-and-regional-implications/