Mediaboss Marketing

Candidate Trump boasted he would rip up the agreement, then renegotiate a much better document. This sent shivers of joy up the spine of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many of his conservative allies, who have opposed any document negotiated with Iran as a cave-in to their existential enemy.

The fact is that Trump will not be touching that Iran nuclear agreement. And, it seems, the Israelis are not unhappy about this -- at least for the moment. There are several interesting reasons for this.

First, Israeli military leaders have told Netanyahu they can't win that war. The war in question, of course, would likely be the consequence of a rapid chain of events that would quite clearly be unleashed the moment the Iranian treaty was torpedoed.

Of course, it would likely take barely a year for a determined Iran to reverse this trend and work toward sufficient material to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons. At some point, likely quite early in that cycle, Israel, which has long believed itself to be the principal first target of any Iranian bomb, would launch a first-strike attack to put any such enterprise out of business.

What the Israeli military has come to realize is the same that the US military understands. Any such attack would require interdiction of multiple, deeply buried or hardened, targets deep inside Iran.

Their deployment would require full complicity if not participation on the part of the US armed forces. The consequences of that are too horrific to imagine, but range across all-out terrorist war against US interests worldwide by Iranian proxies, ostracism by all US allies globally, but particularly in Europe. And in the end no certainty at all that the United States, or even Israel, would wind up any more secure.

More than Israeli sensitivities, or paranoia, are at stake here these days. Iran is increasingly coming to play a central role in the battle against the threat of radical Islamic terrorists -- or at least the Sunni threat. For while Trump correctly and publicly echoes the refrain of Netanyahu that Iran is a principal aider and abettor, not to mention financier, of international terrorism, or Middle East misery, it is also the most virulent opponent of the Sunni branch of Islam, which is embraced by ISIS and the various branches of al Qaeda.

Particularly when Iraqi forces, with American advisers, complete their seizure of Mosul and turn their attention to ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria, then Iranian forces will be essential in these final stages of the war.

So, while Trump is prepared to continue embracing his decision to slap new sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program, the President has also backed away from, or at least refrained from any further embrace, of former national security adviser Michael Flynn's attitude toward Iran.

At the same time, it was becoming increasingly clear that if Trump were to follow through on his ill-considered threat to "tear up" the agreement, he would be doing so alone. None of the other signatories to the pact -- the permanent members of the UN Security Council (Britain, France, Russia, China) plus Germany -- have made any move to follow him.

At some point, though, it is not inconceivable that Trump could try to put his mark on an Iranian treaty by extending the accord, not with sticks, but carrots. After all, some elements begin to expire barely 10 years from now, lifting Iran's uranium enrichment capacity to a level that could allow the production of a bomb within six months. A number of senior ayatollahs have suggested, however, that a nuclear arsenal is not in keeping with the dictates of Shia Islam, though more militant Revolutionary Guard elements are still chafing at their inability to add the atom to their palette of threats. Further incentives to more moderate elements in Tehran could prolong the agreement's reach indefinitely.

Hopefully he will not be tested by the Bannon view. But if he is, we can only hope he stands firmly behind his belief.

Read more from the original source:
Why Trump won't tear up Iran nuclear deal - CNN