Many people understand credibility to mean something like, “sticking to one’s word” or “following through on one’s commitments.” By this standard, President Trump’s Tuesday decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran Deal (formally, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) would bolster Trump’s cred. After all, during his campaign he claimed it was his “number one priority to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.”
Granted, it took him a year and half to realize his #1 priority — perhaps because he has spent about 1 out of every 4 days of his presidency golfing, and an average of one day per week at Mar-a-Lago. But here we are, promise kept. Credibility secured. Indeed, Trump’s boosters believe that his “tough” stance will show the North Koreans, who are currently poised to enter talks with the U.S., that the President will only accept the best of deals.
Just one problem: credibility has nothing to do with following through on one’s word. With regards to threats, for instance, empirical studies overwhelmingly show that no one looks back at their rivals’ previous statements and tabulates their follow-through record. What matters are the stakes a given country has in a particular outcome and the current power dynamics between the countries in question.
With regards to agreements, strategic credibility boils down to whether or not potential allies have a sense that if they throw in their lot with you, it will likely work out well for them. This is all people really care about when they are considering an alliance: a positive outcome. And by this standard, reneging on the Iran Deal is disastrous for American credibility.
Good Faith? Meet Bad Actor
President Obama described the JCPOA as “the most far-reaching inspections and verification regime ever negotiated in an arms control deal.” It was truly a landmark agreement, showing that even some of the world’s most difficult and pressing problems could be peaceably resolved through good-faith multilateral cooperation.
The best part? The deal worked. It really did.
But don’t take my word for it: in recent weeks several senior U.S. military officers and Israeli security officials have forcefully urged the President to stick to the deal – in the interest of U.S. and Israeli national security, and for the sake of U.S. credibility in the world. The IAEA certified Iran as fully compliant with the terms of the agreement. The other parties to the agreement verified this intelligence and also urged the United States to honor these facts. To no avail.
What message does this send to our allies about casting their lot with the United States? Not a good one.
Many took hits to their own economies in order to “bring Iran to the negotiating table” through sanctions, they spent years hammering out the details of one of the most comprehensive multilateral arms-control agreements ever produced, all parties fulfilled their obligations in good faith. The deal has subsequently proved to be an economic boon, not just for Iran, but also the EU and China.
Then the U.S. President decides to arbitrarily withdraw, casting the entire deal into jeopardy. Not just Iran, or future “rogue states,” but also key European allies must now reevaluate the way they deal with the U.S. And this makes the outcomes President Trump is aiming for by withdrawing from the deal far less likely to be realized.
Fool Me Twice…
Ostensibly, Trump is hoping to negotiate a “better deal”: Iran is expected to not only accept even more restrictions on its nuclear activities, but also to abandon key defense projects and virtually abstain from geopolitics.
On its face, it would be insane for the Islamic Republic to agree to these terms – no matter the economic costs — given that they are surrounded by two border-line failed states (Iraq, Afghanistan), an unstable nuclear power (Pakistan), and a rival across the Persian Gulf who is committed to their regime’s destruction (Saudi Arabia). Then there’s Israel a few states over, possessing one of the most formidable militaries in the world, and led by a man who has campaigned incessantly for more than a quarter-century for an overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
Even in a world where the U.S. president seemed credible, and offered complete normalization with Iran in exchange for these concessions, it would be a tough deal to take. But Donald Trump is not offering complete normalization. And the U.S. no longer has strategic credibility on this issue with Iran – and frankly, at this point it seems implausible that it could ever be restored:
This is the second time in recent history that a state has entered into a nuclear agreement with the U.S. only to be betrayed by the subsequent administration.
In 2005, Moammar Gaddhafi struck an agreement with George W. Bush to not only end his nuclear program, but to transfer nuclear materials out of the country, and to cooperate on counter-terrorism initiatives. He fulfilled his end of the deal, but was nonetheless deposed during the ill-conceived “humanitarian” intervention of 2012.
Nonetheless, Iran took a chance on Barack Obama. They entered into the most sweeping arms control deal of its kind ever negotiated – making unpopular and at times painful concessions throughout. President Rouhani staked his domestic legitimacy on being able to change how the world interacted with Iran. The Islamic Republic has complied fully with the agreement. All for naught, it would seem: After a change in the White House, the U.S. has arbitrarily decided to pull out of the agreement, reinstate the sanctions, and is once-again talking about regime change in Iran.
Consequently, there will be no “better” deal. What would be the point of Iran signing a new agreement with a party that has refused to abide by the first one? Especially given the knowledge that –even on the off chance that Trump managed to honor an agreement for the duration of his tenure and does not pursue regime-change in Iran – any eventual successor could nonetheless scrap the deal on a whim, and issue new demands down the line.
But the stakes are hardly limited to Iran: the U.S. is currently trying to negotiate nuclear disarmament of North Korea, a new trade deal with China (one of the signatories of the JCPOA and the TPP – both of which the U.S. has abandoned under Trump), and a retooling of NAFTA. At some point, the U.S. will return to brokering a deal between Israel and Palestine, and negotiating a lasting peace in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. It is unlikely that North Korea, China, Russia, Mexico, Canada, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria find Trump to be more “credible” as a result of shredding the Iran Deal. More likely than not, these negotiations will also grow much more fraught and complicated as a result of Trump’s ill-conceived “strategy” with Iran.