Beltway aghast that Trump is actually sanctioning Iran for support of terrorism

Poor Iran. They had it really good when the Obama Administration was having John Kerry act as their lawyer, even though we were supposedly engaged in tough-as-nails negotiations with them. They were good times for the mad mullahs. Every time they wanted one, Kerry would give them two. Then when other nations would object to Iran's terms, Kerry would run interference for Iran so they didn't have to do it for themselves. Support of terrorism? Why let a little thing like that scuttle a perfectly terrible nuclear deal? The use of unfrozen assets to finance said terrorism? Hey! It's their money. Whaddayagunnado? That was the stance of the Obama Administration because it was determined to get a deal, any deal, no matter how bad - just so they could say they got a deal. And that's exactly what they did. Now we live in a world where it's easier than before for Iran to become a nuclear power because our enforcement mechanisms are a joke and we've freed up the money they need to pay for the materials.

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President Trump has always hated the deal and would love to kill it. He gets a chance ever 90 days when the administration is required by law to inform Congress whether Iran is in compliance with the terms of the deal or not. So far he has certified twice that they are, although that's not really worth much given that the deal doesn't require much of them in the first place. The most recent decision to certify or not certify turned into quite the debate within the White House, as the president's national security team pushed him to certify and Trump pushed back, saying he wanted the U.S. to get tougher on Iran on the terrorism question. The media portrayed this in a negative light: Trump was not listening to his team, and kept changing his mind! My view is completely the opposite. He is the president, and he's the one who has to be satisfied that this is the right thing to do. If he's not, or if he's not sure, then he should demand that his team give him better options. That's what happened on Monday, and the result was a Tuesday surprise that Iran and its best friends (the Russians, the Democrats and the media) don't seem to like one bit:

At a midnight deadline Monday, the Trump administration certified that Iran was complying with the nuclear deal. By law, the U.S. must issue certification every 90 days. This is the second time Trump's government has done so. It came with last-minute drama this time, as Trump balked at certification — against the wishes of his principal national security advisors, according to by a person close to the White House who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal debate.

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On Monday, after talking points for certifying Iran's compliance already had been distributed within the administration, Trump told senior advisors he was having second thoughts and wanted other options. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came to the Oval Office around 1:30 p.m. for a previously scheduled and unrelated meeting with Trump, but the discussion was dominated by what to do with the Iran deal. Tillerson argued that allies needed more notice before stating Iran wasn’t complying with the deal. Trump national security advisor H.R. McMaster and other senior advisors present, including Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also made the case for holding off. But Steve Bannon, Trump’s strategic advisor who keeps a list of Trump’s campaign pledges on a white board in his White House office, said Trump should follow through with his promise to tear up the deal. After nearly an hour, Trump agreed to support certification, but demanded a plan for getting tougher on Iran. Facing the midnight deadline to inform Congress, advisors were still were tweaking the wording of the announcement as late as 9:30 p.m.

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Hours after the certification, the administration announced the new sanctions for Iran's separate actions. The penalties are the latest in a long list of attempts to punish Tehran. "Iran’s other malign activities are serving to undercut whatever 'positive contributions' to regional and international peace and security were intended to emerge from the" nuclear agreement, Nauert said. Besides Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the new sanctions target the military's support of so-called "fast attack boats," which are the small vessels Iran uses to harass U.S. ships in the region's waters.

This is exactly what a president should do. It is not his job to simply rubber-stamp what his advisors suggest. They advise. They don't decide. He chooses the priorities for the administration, and their job is to help him execute those priorities. And in a situation like this, where it's not easy or obvious how to deal with the situation at hand, it's to Trump's credit that he gave the matter a lot of thought and challenged his team to come up with a better plan than the original one. A president who gets along by going along just says yes to whatever the conventional wisdom suggests. That's the path of least resistance, and usually the least achievement as well.

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The result is a welcome change too. Iran is grumbling that the deal doesn't allow the U.S. to do this, but the deal is not a treaty. It was an executive agreement between Obama and the Iranian regime, and there is no reason Trump should let Iran get away with literal murder if he thinks it's unreasonable to do so - which it obviously is. Trump has also been telling his advisors that he's not going to just keep certifying this every 90 days because it's the easy thing to do, and he's right there as well. The diplomatic community always wants to protect its pieces of paper, but when a deal is bad in the first place and doesn't serve the country's interests, the president should challenge them to upend the status quo. This is being portrayed as Trump being erratic and inexperienced in the ways of diplomacy. In fact, it's Trump recognizing that the ways of diplomacy have not gotten good results, and that this is going to have to change. Good.

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