Will Trump End the Iran Deal?

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump join King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, and the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, Sunday, May 21, 2017, to participate in the inaugural opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Neocons in the Trump administration want to put an end to the Iran nuclear deal. Despite some flaws, the deal has been working. Daniel Larison reports in The American Conservative that the reason neocons dislike the deal is because it peacefully settled a dispute. The neocon crowd in Washington has been pushing war with Iran for years, and if the deal remains in place, they have little hope for success.

Also of concern is that the Trump administration has become close with the leaders of both Saudi Arabia, and Israel, ardent foes of Iran who would probably like to see the U.S. take out their enemy. Larison writes (abridged):

The head of the IAEA is reduced to pleading on behalf of the nuclear deal:

Yukiya Amano said that if the deal “were to fail it would be a great loss for nuclear verification and multilateralism.”

Amano said U.N. inspectors had access to all required sites and between them now spend 3,000 calendar days a year working in Iran.

Amano is right to defend the deal, and everything he says about it is true. The trouble is that the opponents of the deal are not interested in nuclear verification or multilateralism. The fact that the head of the IAEA vouches for the deal is another reason for Bolton et al. to want to get rid of it. They hate the deal because it is successful. It settles a dispute peacefully, and it removes an excuse for unnecessary war.