December 23, 2016
The standard news articlereport on Donald Trump’s policy on Iran is to say that during the campaign he pledged to “tear up” the nuclear agreement and “dismantle” it.
Actually, Trump did not say he would “tear up” the agreement; that was common for many of the other GOP candidates in the primary campaigns, but Trump did not join in that refrain.
He did, however, pledge to “dismantle” the deal in a speech delivered, ironically, last Now Ruz. However, only a dozen sentences later in that speech, Trump called for “restructuring” the nuclear agreement with Iran, contradicting himself and his “dismantle” pledge.
Over the months of the campaign, Trump said dozens of times that he was a master negotiator who would re-negotiate the deal with Iran. That was his most common comment about the nuclear agreement, which he also said could not simply be torn up because Iran had already gotten the main benefit of the agreement, which he cited as the payment of $150 billion in cash—Iran’s frozen funds that were unfrozen by the agreement. That ignored the lifting of sanctions.
Trump said Iran got the money and “we received absolutely nothing in return,” ignoring the 15-year ban on Iran enriching uranium above 3.67 percent.
Since the election, Trump has been silent about Iran. The only detailed statement of an Iran policy was in the speech he gave on Now Ruz to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). That has the benefit of being a prepared text and not some off-the-cuff comment.
In that speech, Trump pledged to focus on three points with Iran:
- “Standing up” to the Islamic Republic’s push to dominate the Middle East.
- “Dismantling” the regime’s terror network; after first saying he would “dismantle” the nuclear agreement, he then applied that word to Iran’s “terror network.”
- “Restructuring” the nuclear agreement, although the sole change he called for was broadening the agreement to stop Iran’s missile program.
Here is the full text of the Iran portion of Trump’s Now Ruz speech to AIPAC:
“My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making and, let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic—for America, for Israel, and for the whole Middle East.
“The problem here is fundamental. We have rewarded the world’s leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion and we received absolutely nothing in return.
“I’ve studied this issue in greater detail than almost anybody. The biggest concern with the deal is not necessarily that Iran is going to violate it, although it already has. The bigger problem is that they can keep the terms and still get to the bomb by simply running out the clock, and, of course, they keep the billions.
“The deal doesn’t even require Iran to dismantle its military nuclear capability! Yes, it places limits on its military nuclear program for only a certain number of years. But when those restrictions expire, Iran will have an industrial-size military nuclear capability ready to go, and with zero provision for delay no matter how bad Iran’s behavior is. When I am president, I will adopt a strategy that focuses on three things when it comes to Iran.
“First, we will stand up to Iran’s aggressive push to destabilize and dominate the region. Iran is a very big problem and will continue to be. But, if I’m elected President, I know how to deal with trouble. Iran is a problem in Iraq, a problem in Syria, a problem in Lebanon, a problem in Yemen, and will be a very major problem for Saudi Arabia. Literally every day, Iran provides more and better weapons to their puppet states.
“Hezbollah in Lebanon has received sophisticated anti-ship weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, and GPS systems on rockets. Now they’re in Syria trying to establish another front against Israel from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.
“In Gaza, Iran is supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad—and in the West Bank they are openly offering Palestinians $7,000 per terror attack and $30,000 for every Palestinian terrorist’s home that’s been destroyed.
“Iran is financing military forces throughout the Middle East and it is absolutely indefensible that we handed them over $150 billion to facilitate even more acts of terror.
“Secondly, we will totally dismantle Iran’s global terror network. Iran has seeded terror groups all over the world. During the last five years, Iran has perpetrated terror attacks in 25 different countries on five continents. They’ve got terror cells everywhere, including in the western hemisphere very close to home. Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism around the world and we will work to dismantle that reach.
“Third, at the very least, we must hold Iran accountable by restructuring the terms of the previous deal. Iran has already—since the deal is in place—test-fired ballistic missiles three times. Those ballistic missiles, with a range of 1,250 miles, were designed to intimidate not only Israel, which is only 600 miles away but also intended to frighten Europe, and, someday, the United States.
“Do you want to hear something really shocking? As many of the great people in this room know, painted on those missiles—in both Hebrew and Farsi—were the words: “Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth.”
“What kind of demented minds write that in Hebrew? And here’s another twisted part—testing these missiles does not even violate the horrible deal that we made!
“The deal is silent on test missiles, but those tests DO violate UN Security Council Resolutions. The problem is, no one has done anything about it.”
