Forget China and underwater drones, forget Russian hacks and leaks, because it’s all a sideshow: America’s big-ticket foreign-policy issue is still the Iran deal. Donald Trump has promised to rip it up on day one of his presidency, but that’s not going to happen because it means the freshly minted commander-in-chief may have America poised for conflict with the leading state sponsor of terror before the band even starts to warm up for the inaugural ball next month at the newly opened Trump International Hotel.
Prospective policymakers and analysts are busy proposing options for the new president. Recently, a debate has started to unfold with one side pushing to enforce the provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and impose sanctions. Others argue the best way forward is to renegotiate a bad deal. Richard Nephew, the lead sanctions expert for the Obama administration team that negotiated the deal with Iran, argues that renegotiating the JCPOA is nearly impossible because you can’t create the same conditions that got the Iranians to the table in the first place. Others see “enforcement” as a way to re-create the leverage that America lost when it signed the deal.
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