In The Media
Jessica Tuchman Mathews
{
"authors": [
"Jessica Tuchman Mathews"
],
"type": "legacyinthemedia",
"centerAffiliationAll": "",
"centers": [
"Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
"Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center"
],
"collections": [
"Iranian Proliferation"
],
"englishNewsletterAll": "",
"nonEnglishNewsletterAll": "",
"primaryCenter": "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
"programAffiliation": "",
"programs": [],
"projects": [],
"regions": [
"Middle East",
"Iran"
],
"topics": [
"Political Reform",
"Security",
"Nuclear Policy"
]
}
Source: Getty
In The Media
The Iran Deal: What’s at Stake
The Iran Deal may not be perfect but the decision by the Trump Administration weakens oversight mechanisms and causes rifts between America and its European allies.
Published on Nov 2, 2017
Source: New York Review of Books
Imagine a business deal among multiple parties. It is so complex that after years of negotiation the contract runs to 159 pages. Once agreed upon, the project proceeds without problems, but two years later one of the signers changes his mind. His lawyers rewrite some of the deal’s provisions, and he announces he’ll pull out unless the other parties accept the new terms.
That, in essence, is what Donald Trump announced on October 13 when he refused to certify to Congress that the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was working. Certification does not affect the deal itself. It is a purely domestic act. The president is required to do it every ninety days by the terms of the legislation with which Congress approved the JCPOA in 2015. Repeated certifications of this kind are commonly used in contentious situations, such as when sanctions are waived or arms are sold to a problematic buyer, to assure Congress that its conditions are still being met. It is difficult to imagine a president taking what should have been a routine official signature as a reminder of his predecessor’s achievement and therefore an intolerable personal insult. But that is what happened.
On the occasion of his second required certification last July, Trump exploded in anger at his aides for not providing him with an alternative course and made it clear that he didn’t intend to sign again—whether Iran had violated the deal or not. Since then his national security team has frantically sought to come up with a ploy that would satisfy the president without immediately pulling the United States out of the nuclear deal. They have tested various options in public settings and private conversations with European cosigners of the agreement. None was well received, to put it mildly....
This book review was originally published in the New York Review of Books.
About the Author
Jessica Tuchman Mathews
Distinguished Fellow
Mathews is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She served as Carnegie’s president for 18 years.
- Washington Already Knows How to Deal with North Korea
- Trump Wins—and Now?Commentary
Jessica Tuchman Mathews
Recent Work
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
More Work from Carnegie Europe
- Taking the Pulse: Does the EU Have a Germany Problem?Commentary
Are Germany’s economic, industrial, and political struggles becoming a liability for the EU’s ability to rise to the geopolitical moment?
Rym Momtaz, ed.
- Europe’s Overseas Countries and Territories as Geopolitical AssetsArticle
European states control several Overseas Countries and Territories around the world that carry strategic, economic, and environmental weight. As great powers challenge the rules-based order, defending them is a geopolitical imperative for Europe.
Marc Pierini
- Why Russia Could Escalate Hybrid Warfare Against EuropeCommentary
Mounting economic strain and battlefield losses will not necessarily make the Kremlin less dangerous. They could instead push Moscow toward a more aggressive hybrid campaign designed to test NATO’s Eastern flank, exploit allied hesitation, and fracture European resolve.
Maksym Beznosiuk
- Taking the Pulse: Enough with the Annual NATO Summits, Already?Commentary
Over the past ten years, NATO has held almost as many summits as it did during the entirety of the Cold War. Are they still useful, or is it time to stop holding annual meetings?
Rym Momtaz, ed.
- Europe from Scratch: Visions for a New European OrderReport
As the EU confronts profound challenges, several leaders have called for fundamental reform to the union’s model—but only modest, superficial changes have resulted. What if Europe really could be reimagined from zero today: What should such a redesigned European order look like?
Richard Youngs, ed.
