Iran, Russia and European leaders roundly condemned President Trump’s decision on Friday to disavow the Iran nuclear deal, saying that it reflected the growing isolation of the United States, threatened to destabilize the Middle East and could make it harder to resolve the growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
[Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a rare joint statement that] ‘the nuclear deal was the culmination of 13 years of diplomacy and was a major step towards ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program is not diverted for military purposes.’…
‘Destroying this agreement would, worldwide, mean that others could no longer rely on such agreements — that’s why it is a danger that goes further than Iran,’ [Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s foreign minister, said].
(New York Times, October 13, 2017)
Donald Trump is utterly unfit to serve as president of the United States. His nuclear war of words with Kim Jong-un of North Korea and his willful decertification of the nuclear deal with Iran are just the latest in a litany of examples that prove this beyond any reasonable doubt.
Meanwhile, Trump has made much of his “special relationship” with French President Emanuel Macron. And Macron surely knew that nothing would stroke Trump’s infantile ego quite like inviting him as guest of honor for the annual Bastille Day parade, which takes on July 14 each year.
Sure enough, Trump was so impressed by the military hardware on Soviet-style display, he said he wants to feature similar hardware in Washington’s annual Independence Day parade, which takes place on July 4 each year. True to form, he made clear his intent to show the world that America has more and much bigger military hardware than anyone has ever seen.
Except that, apropos of special relationships, Margaret Thatcher never defied Ronald Reagan like this:
France is determined to preserve the 2015 nuclear agreement in the face of a hardened US position as President Emmanuel Macron considers a potential trip to Iran. …
Macron, who had a call Friday with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, discussed with him a potential trip to Iran, which would be the first by a French leader since the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah, according to AFP. [French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves] Le Drian will travel to Tehran over the next weeks.
(Bloomberg, October 15, 2017)
In fact, it’s instructive that all of Macron’s predecessors stood by all of Trump’s predecessors in refusing to travel to Cuba during the 50-year embargo. Francois Hollande became the first French president to visit there in May 2015. But that was only after President Obama normalized relations with Cuba in December 2014.
Macron could have let his joint statement with Merkel and May speak for his opposition to Trump’s decertification. But he clearly thinks little of Trump’s de-facto title as leader of the free world.
Only this explains Macron’s eagerness to add insult to his defiance by traveling to break bread with the leaders of Iran. After all, in announcing his decertification, Trump aped George W. Bush by condemning Iran as an unrepentant and unreformed member of the infamous axis of evil.
Who knows, Macron might just have the “Gaul” to think he could wrest that title from Trump.
To be fair, it might appear that Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is following Trump. But he’s actually misleading him. For this Iago of a prime minister finally has in Trump a US president stupid enough to do his bidding where the Byzantine politics of the Middle East are concerned. And top of Netanyahu’s cunning agenda is getting the United States to wipe Iran off the map, with all due respect to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
I refer you to “Aping Mideast Dictatorships, Israel Bans Al Jazeera,” August 8, 2017, for more on Netanyahu’s Shakespearean manipulation of Trump.
Related commentaries:
Trump decertifying Iran nuclear deal…
Aping Mideast…