Just a few of the ways the Trump-Iran MOU appears to be a disaster — starting with the administration’s refusal to publish it.
To repeat what I contended yesterday, they think we’re idiots.
Let’s take it down to the simple basics. Trump’s agreement with Iran is not an agreement, it’s a memorandum of understanding (MOU), reportedly stating that the parties will talk about making an agreement, for infinitely extendable 60-day limits. That is, other than the billions to which the Trump administration has agreed to give the implacably anti-American jihadist regime, the MOU is a nothing that Neville Trump is peddling as peace in our time.
But to the extent the MOU is something, it is something very bad because if it were something good, we’d be reading it, not being spun about it.
The president is an impetuous man who would not be able to contain himself if the written MOU were of even marginal benefit to the United States; he would be far more comfortable exposing it and exaggerating the marginal benefit as if it were a coup. The fact that the Trump administration refuses to publish the MOU — refuses even to brief the Gang of Eight on it — is powerful implication that it is at least as bad as close watchers suspect it is.
Administration apologists maintain that their critics are accepting IRGC spin. But if there is an information void that the IRGC is filling with propaganda, then all the administration has to do is release the written agreement; that would fill the void with verifiable, written terms. And, by the way, if the IRGC is spinning dishonestly, why is Trump/Vance crediting regime claims that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons? This credulity gives Trump’s plan the makings of JCPOA 2.0, since taking the apocalyptic Islamic regime’s word for what its intentions were was the foundation of the original Obama JCPOA.
The most ridiculous nonsense (admittedly, there’s a lot of competition here) is that Iran has foresworn nuclear weapons. Iran has always publicly foresworn nuclear weapons and emphasized that it is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That is what NPT members that aspire to nuclear weapons do. And as I recounted yesterday, just to make bigger fools out of us, Iran has also maintained that Ayatollah Khamenei even issued a fatwa against nukes (Khamenei was not qualified to issue fatwas, there wasn’t one in any event, and the regime zealously went about its nuclear weapons program even as it publicly claimed it neither wanted nor needed them). To see the president beating his chest that “Iran has agreed to never have a Nuclear Weapon!” is really quite something.
A close second on the ridiculous meter is the insistence by Trump and Vice President Vance that Iran will not be getting a dime of U.S. taxpayer money. That’s a straw man. The point is that Iran gets access to funds — through sanctions relief and whatever cockamamie “investment fund” the administration is conjuring. That the funds are not coming directly out of the U.S. treasury is beside the point.
The JCPOA was not essentially about direct U.S. payments (except to the extent President Obama raided the government’s judgment fund as a pretext to pay ransom to seal the deal). The JCPOA was about sanctions relief. That is what filled its coffers with tens of billions of dollars — as Trump pointed out, many times. Much like Democrats, Trump and Vance are emphasizing that the funds in question are Iran’s funds. Well, yes, that’s what frozen means — we arrange to intercept their revenue and hold it where they can’t get it. That’s because, when they get it, they use it for terrorism, ballistic missiles, the nuclear program, domestic human-rights abuses, and so on. See how this works? It doesn’t matter that the funds they are getting under the MOU and what’s coming after the MOU are not American funds; it matters that the funds they get, from whatever source, are used against America.
As with the JCPOA, the notion that the MOU, and what the administration would have us believe comes later, ends the nuclear weapons threat is laughable. The Trump administration has conceded in principle that Iran has a right to enrich uranium (a concession I’ve urged was a fatal mistake); it is set to begin the post-MOU negotiations on the premise that Iran will only enrich to civilian grade. But (a) if you allow them to enrich to civilian grade, they have to have the centrifuges and other infrastructure to do that; (b) that is the same infrastructure needed to get to weapons grade; and (c) in uranium enrichment, the real challenge is getting from zero to civilian grade (around 3 percent) — estimates are that that is about three-quarters of the work needed to get to weapons grade. If you’re serious about preventing the regime from developing nuclear weapons, then you (1) deny them the right to enrich and to have enrichment infrastructure; (2) remove the nine or ten bombs’ worth of enriched uranium they already have (or at least ensure that it is inaccessible); and (3) put in place a credible snap-inspection process. That’s not on the table.
It has been reported that the MOU contemplates a final agreement to be approved through a “binding” United Nations Security Council resolution, and that the Senate (to say nothing of Congress as a whole) hasn’t been briefed on the agreement (although the Qataris apparently know its details). This is exactly how Obama sought to get around the constitutional inconvenience of the treaty clause. In our system, however, no one’s signature on an international agreement, not even the president’s, makes it a binding legal commitment; the Framers did not give the executive such power.
No agreement is binding unless it is approved by a two-thirds’ supermajority of the Senate. Some Trump apologists claim it is sabotage against the president to make this argument because Obama got the benefit of the Republican-backed Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (which I discuss in the most recent issue of the National Review print magazine). The INARA, however, was an unconstitutional sabotage of the Constitution; rather than the treaty clause’s requirement of supermajority Senate approval of an international pact, it purported to indulge such a pact unless there was supermajority disapproval by both congressional chambers (i.e., enough to override a certain presidential veto). Here at NR we objected vigorously, as did most principled conservatives, because the INARA is unconstitutional to the extent it suggests that burdens on the United States can be imposed by international agreements that have not either been ratified under the treaty process or had their terms enacted by legislation enacted under the constitutional procedure. Neither a statute nor international law can change the Constitution’s mandates.
Am I wrong that this MOU is a disaster? Am I wrong that the administration is insulting our intelligence? There’s a sure way to find out: Publish the MOU.