I thought President Trump, right at the beginning of his Presidency, was going to solve the war between Russia and Ukraine and was going to bring to an end the war between Israel and Hamas. Isn’t that what he had promised. Instead we had the news that American warplanes and submarines attacked three key nuclear sites in Iran early Sunday, bringing the U.S. military directly into Israel’s war with Iran.

Oh boy.

Some of us remember that this problem had been virtually solved at the end of the Obama administration after John Kerry helped to negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which significantly, was not an agreement between Iran and the United States, but between Iran and the “P5+1” countries — China, France, Russia, the U.K., U.S., plus one — in other words, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. The deal was finalized in Vienna on 14 July 2015. The JCPOA was aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, in exchange for relief from international economic sanctions.

The main terms of the agreement included:

1. Uranium Enrichment Limits
   
   • Iran agreed to limit uranium enrichment to 3.67% (well below weapons-grade).
     
   • Iran could possess no more than 300 kg of enriched uranium for 15 years.
     
2. Centrifuge Reductions
   
   • Iran reduced its number of installed centrifuges by two-thirds (from ~19,000 to ~6,000), and only ~5,000 could be used to enrich uranium.
     
3. Reactor Modifications
   
   • The Arak heavy-water reactor was redesigned so it could not produce weapons-grade plutonium.
     
4. Inspections and Monitoring
   
   • Iran agreed to extensive IAEA inspections, including continuous surveillance of nuclear facilities.
     
   • The IAEA could access suspected undeclared sites with advance notice.
     
5. Sanctions Relief
   
   • In return, the U.S., EU, and UN agreed to lift nuclear-related economic sanctions, giving Iran access to international markets and billions in frozen assets.
     
6. Snapback Provision
   
   • If Iran violated the terms, sanctions could be reinstated (“snapped back”) by a UN process without veto power by Russia or China.
     

The deal was not perfect, and critics argued among other things that it delayed rather than eliminated Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 

So fucking what? You can’t negotiate away ambition. Something is better than nothing.

Since he had not negotiated the deal himself, Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in May 2018, reinstating sanctions. Not surprisingly, the deal fell apart.

I’m not quite sure what prompted Israel to go ahead and launch an unprovoked and unilateral attack on Iran, but that was the decision of Benjamin Netanyahu and the government of Israel. It’s not our fight.

And yet, here we are.

Some Republicans like Rand Paul, Mitt Romney and John Cornyn, as well as (gulp) Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Matt Gaetz — do I now have to be in agreement on something with that demonic crew? — are opposed to our involvement, so at least there is some pushback within the Republican ranks themselves. 

Nevertheless, a majority of Republicans still have not noticed that Trump has failed to live up to just about every promise he made on the campaign trail. He hasn’t even deported more undocumented immigrants than Biden or Obama. It’s just that for the ones he has deported, it’s been in a much more lawless way. 

I don’t know if I can wait long enough for the fever to break and for some large portion of Trump supporters to finally recognize the fraud behind the curtain in Oz.