On Iran and North Korea, Trump prepares to screw everything up
By Paul Waldman May 1 at 1:27 PM
There are some arguments so dumb only President Trump could take them seriously. That’s the only conclusion you could reach after seeing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s faux-dramatic speech on Monday, in which he literally pulled a sheet off a pile of documents, like a magician unveiling a cage full of doves, to demonstrate Iran’s dishonesty about its nuclear program.
The point of the act was to persuade Trump to pull out of the nuclear agreement negotiated in 2015 between the United States, Iran, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union, and it just might succeed. Which in turn could make a nuclear agreement with North Korea all but impossible.
As you look around at these high-stakes matters of foreign policy and national security, you quickly realize that everyone, no matter which side they’re on, takes it as a given that the president of the United States is an infantile half-wit, and they must adjust their strategies accordingly.
Let’s start with Netanyahu’s speech. Citing a trove of materials Israeli intelligence acquired in a raid on an Iranian facility, he said he would present “conclusive proof of the secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community in its secret atomic archive.” The documents show that Iran’s regular protestations that it had never sought nuclear weapons were false. Here’s how he concluded:
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/05/01/on-iran-and-north-korea-trump-prepares-to-screw-everything-up/
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