When Donald Trump launched the Iran war in February, he risked alienating the non-interventionist base he had spent a decade cultivating.
As he now tries to extract himself from the highly unpopular war, it looks increasingly like he might inflame the other side of his base — the foreign policy hawks with whom he suddenly found himself in-league.
While there are few hard details of what’s actually in the memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Iran, those hawks are openly worrying that Trump gave away too much in the name of trying to end the war. They’ve made no secret that they fear Trump signing on to a nuclear agreement like the one struck by the Obama administration in 2015, which they (and Trump himself) derided as too weak for more than a decade.
How could it be described as anything other than caving? According to the leaked preliminary details, all he did was just secured Obama’s deal, but worse since at least Obama carved out provisions to ensure that inspections were being done to verify that Iran was not building a nuclear program. What we are getting is a pinky promise, leaving the door open to future bombings when the schizo USA decides to play world police again.
I’m also not convinced Charlie Brown has finally kicked the football here. Deal isn’t final until the ink is dry, and Pakistan will likely call out Israel for continuing to bomb Lebanon in violation of the ceasefire agreement.