By Robert P. Bomboy
Is there anyone that President Trump can't or won't insult or
attack?
For TV viewers old enough to remember from long ago, Trump at
the United Nations last week looked and sounded very much like the Russian
Premier Nikita Khrushchev who, back in 1960,
took off his shoe, angrily pounded it on the UN lectern, and looked like a
boob.
Addressing 150 delegates
from around the world at the UN General Assembly, Trump lashed out at the 2015 agreement
that stopped Iran's nuclear weapons program, calling it "an
embarrassment" and "one of the worst and most
one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into."
The insult, certainly, was to the
five other UN members - Britain, Germany, France, China, and Russia - that had
negotiated and signed the agreement. Can you imagine
someone coming into your house and shouting, "Your wife is ugly!"
The truth is that the six-nation agreement with Iran is working.
With a few minor exceptions that have nothing to do with nuclear
proliferation —and each one quickly corrected when rigorous and continual
inspections discovered them — Iran is keeping its promise to obey the limits on its stockpiles of
low-enriched uranium, centrifuges for enriching the uranium, and heavy water
for nuclear plant operations.
In other words, what it would need
to make nuclear bombs. Last year, for example, Iran poured concrete into the
core of its only heavy-water nuclear reactor capable of producing weapons-grade
plutonium, ruining the device forever.
Despite what Trump says, there is a tough policeman on duty.
We're not alone on Iran's back.
Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency are
continuously and strictly monitoring what Iran is doing. The inspectors have
installed permanent cameras and electronic seals to track whether valves,
stockpiles, or other indicators have been altered. They conduct
in-person inspections of 19 declared nuclear sites, and, despite Iranian
officials claiming that military bases are off-limits, the nuclear policemen
can inspect any other location where they suspect a possible violation.
If Iran would resist and fail to satisfy the inspectors and
inspections, all bets would be off.
Trump has always huffed and puffed about the amount of its money
we returned to Iran in 2015 after it signed the nuclear agreement - an amount
hugely overestimated at the time but actually about $60 billion, according to
the Institute of International Finance.
Since 2015 Iran has re-entered
the world economy, buying, for example, $19.6 billion worth of passenger planes
from Boeing Aircraft - including $3 billion in orders last week and $16.6
billion previously. The new $3 billion contract will create or sustain 18,000
U.S. jobs, according to the Trump Administration's Department of Commerce.
Iran remains a bad actor in the
world. But a bad actor without nuclear weapons is better than a bad actor with
nuclear weapons. Imagine how much safer the world would be if a similar deal
had been struck with North Korea years ago, before it could aim nuclear
missiles at the United States.
Both European and Asian leaders are especially
worried that Trump's backtracking on the Iran deal could lead North Korea to
block any possibility of negotiating over its nuclear program.
France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le
Drian, pointed out after Trump's UN speech: “It
is essential to maintain the Iran nuclear agreement to avoid proliferation. In
this period when we see the risks with North Korea, we must maintain this
line,”
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