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By APD Writer Wang Peng
After more than nine months in office, the American President Donald Trump seems to make few diplomatic achievements. But now, perhaps he has found a breakthrough by ramping up a new Iran policy.
A few days ago, during and after the UN General Assembly, Trump approved the long-awaited strategy to deal with the Iranian issue, which outlines a new aggressive approach to countering Iran’s threats all over the world and endeavors to use the leverage of Trump's threats over the Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to spur U.S. allies to begin to address its flaws.
The deal/JCPOA is widely regarded as a milestone of the Middle East security and nuclear arrangement. The American Congress requires regular notification from the administration that Iran is complying with the agreement that was reached two years ago with the United States and five other world powers to limit its nuclear program for peaceful purposes. Now everything is well. No evidence proves Iran has violated the deal.
But Trump announced new sanctions against Iran and threatened to terminate the 2015 nuclear agreement with the country in a militarist speech at the White House. ‘Iran is not living up to the spirit of the deal,’ as he emphasized.
Reviewing the ‘President Donald J. Trump's New Strategy on Iran’ published by White House later, it is clear that Trump has put the clock back before Obama Administration by threating to tear up JCPOA and imposing tougher sanctions against Iran.
The centerpiece of Trump’s new Iran strategy is twofold. The one is to include the limits to Iran’s (balastic) missiles research and development. The other is to target to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Although Trump did not regard IRGC as a terrorist organization in the White House document, the same category as al Qaeda or the Islamic State, he called for new “tough sanctions” imposed on IRCG and called it ‘corrupt terror force’.
As expected, Iran turned angry against Trump’s provocation immediately. So are the other 5 parties involved in the JCPOA, namely, Russia, China, UK, France, and Germany.
Putin warns Trump’s administration not to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal - saying America's withdrawal would harm ‘predictability, security, stability and non-proliferation around the world’. The Kremlin also warned that should the US leave the pact, Iran would be likely to quit the agreement as well.
Germany, an important ally of America in Europe, also show negative response to Trump’s threats against Iran. As experts commented this event may aggravate German/Europe-American tensions to certain degree.
From Chinese perspective of view, the most negative effects may be caused by Trump’s new Iran policy may lie in the issue of denuclearization in Korean Peninsula.
China has offered the ‘double suspension’ proposal to both Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and America. The prerequisite of the running of ‘double suspension’ relies on the minimum mutual trust between the two countries.
However, now Trump’s behavior without any basic sense of ‘international strategic credibility’ will clearly remind the DPRK that they must avoid falling into the same old trap again. The DPRK’s regime has more valid excuses to steadfast their determination to develop nuclear and ballistic missiles.
In addition, since the rising tensions between America and Iran in the Middle East will undoubtedly exhaust the national strength and strategic focus of America, Trump’s threat to Pyongyang will lose its credibility. Empty threat does not make any sense in resolving the nuclear issue.
So it is safe to say that the US move against the nuclear deal would have very negative consequences and would seriously aggravate the situation around the Iranian nuclear dossier, as well as the DPRK nuclear issue from thousands of miles away.
Dr. Wang Peng, Fellow at APD Institute, Research Associate at the Charhar Institute and China Institute of Fudan University.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
