'A serious mistake': Read Barack Obama's statement on President Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/08/a-serious-mistake-read-obamas-statement-on-trumps-decision-to-pull-out-of-iran-deal.html
Former President Barack Obama criticized President Donald Trump's decision Tuesday to pull the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, was negotiated and implemented during Obama's presidency. The U.S. withdrawal fulfills a Trump campaign promise.
The 2015 pact lifted sanctions on Iran that crippled its economy and cut its oil exports roughly in half. In exchange for sanctions relief, Iran accepted limits on its nuclear program and allowed international inspectors into its facilities. Pulling out of the deal could strain diplomatic relationships with U.S. allies such as France and Germany, and it could have ripple effects in the oil market.
"I believe that the decision to put the JCPOA at risk without any Iranian violation of the deal is a serious mistake," Obama.
Here's Obama's full statement:
"There are few issues more important to the security of the United States than the potential spread of nuclear weapons, or the potential for even more destructive war in the Middle East. That's why the United States negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the first place.
The reality is clear. The JCPOA is working – that is a view shared by our European allies, independent experts, and the current U.S. Secretary of Defense. The JCPOA is in America's interest – it has significantly rolled back Iran's nuclear program. And the JCPOA is a model for what diplomacy can accomplish – its inspections and verification regime is precisely what the United States should be working to put in place with North Korea. Indeed, at a time when we are all rooting for diplomacy with North Korea to succeed, walking away from the JCPOA risks losing a deal that accomplishes – with Iran – the very outcome that we are pursuing with the North Koreans.
That is why today's announcement is so misguided. Walking away from the JCPOA turns our back on America's closest allies, and an agreement that our country's leading diplomats, scientists, and intelligence professionals negotiated. In a democracy, there will always be changes in policies and priorities from one Administration to the next. But the consistent flouting of agreements that our country is a party to risks eroding America's credibility, and puts us at odds with the world's major powers.
Debates in our country should be informed by facts, especially debates that have proven to be divisive. So it's important to review several facts about the JCPOA.
First, the JCPOA was not just an agreement between my Administration and the Iranian government. After years of building an international coalition that could impose crippling sanctions on Iran, we reached the JCPOA together with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the European Union, Russia, China, and Iran. It is a multilateral arms control deal, unanimously endorsed by a United Nations Security Council Resolution.
Second, the JCPOA has worked in rolling back Iran's nuclear program. For decades, Iran had steadily advanced its nuclear program, approaching the point where they could rapidly produce enough fissile material to build a bomb. The JCPOA put a lid on that breakout capacity. Since the JCPOA was implemented, Iran has destroyed the core of a reactor that could have produced weapons-grade plutonium; removed two-thirds of its centrifuges (over 13,000) and placed them under international monitoring; and eliminated 97 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium – the raw materials necessary for a bomb. So by any measure, the JCPOA has imposed strict limitations on Iran's nuclear program and achieved real results.
Third, the JCPOA does not rely on trust – it is rooted in the most far-reaching inspections and verification regime ever negotiated in an arms control deal. Iran's nuclear facilities are strictly monitored. International monitors also have access to Iran's entire nuclear supply chain, so that we can catch them if they cheat. Without the JCPOA, this monitoring and inspections regime would go away.
Fourth, Iran is complying with the JCPOA. That was not simply the view of my Administration. The United States intelligence community has continued to find that Iran is meeting its responsibilities under the deal, and has reported as much to Congress. So have our closest allies, and the international agency responsible for verifying Iranian compliance – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Fifth, the JCPOA does not expire. The prohibition on Iran ever obtaining a nuclear weapon is permanent. Some of the most important and intrusive inspections codified by the JCPOA are permanent. Even as some of the provisions in the JCPOA do become less strict with time, this won't happen until ten, fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years into the deal, so there is little reason to put those restrictions at risk today.
Finally, the JCPOA was never intended to solve all of our problems with Iran. We were clear-eyed that Iran engages in destabilizing behavior – including support for terrorism, and threats toward Israel and its neighbors. But that's precisely why it was so important that we prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Every aspect of Iranian behavior that is troubling is far more dangerous if their nuclear program is unconstrained. Our ability to confront Iran's destabilizing behavior – and to sustain a unity of purpose with our allies – is strengthened with the JCPOA, and weakened without it.
Because of these facts, I believe that the decision to put the JCPOA at risk without any Iranian violation of the deal is a serious mistake. Without the JCPOA, the United States could eventually be left with a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East. We all know the dangers of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. It could embolden an already dangerous regime; threaten our friends with destruction; pose unacceptable dangers to America's own security; and trigger an arms race in the world's most dangerous region. If the constraints on Iran's nuclear program under the JCPOA are lost, we could be hastening the day when we are faced with the choice between living with that threat, or going to war to prevent it.
In a dangerous world, America must be able to rely in part on strong, principled diplomacy to secure our country. We have been safer in the years since we achieved the JCPOA, thanks in part to the work of our diplomats, many members of Congress, and our allies. Going forward, I hope that Americans continue to speak out in support of the kind of strong, principled, fact-based, and unifying leadership that can best secure our country and uphold our responsibilities around the globe."
Obama rips Trump decision to leave Iran deal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b35XB34ksTU
Obama calls Trump's decision on Iran nuclear deal 'misguided'
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-obama/obama-calls-trumps-decision-on-iran-nuclear-deal-misguided-idUSKBN1I92ZX
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, struck during Obama’s presidency, was “misguided.”
“I believe that the decision to put the JCPOA at risk without any Iranian violation of the deal is a serious mistake,” Obama said in a statement, referring to the acronym for the agreement worked out by the United States, five other world powers and Iran.
Since leaving office in January 2017, Obama, a Democrat, has largely remained on the sidelines of the political debate, although he has criticized his Republican successor’s efforts to undo some of his major policy achievements.
He has condemned Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate accord and for ending a program that shielded from deportation immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. He also spoke out against Trump’s effort to unravel the Obamacare healthcare program.
Obama said the Iran agreement significantly rolled back Tehran’s nuclear program and was a model for a possible deal Trump hopes to negotiate with North Korea to eliminate Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons.
“That is why today’s announcement is so misguided,” Obama said.
“Walking away from the JCPOA turns our back on America’s closest allies, and an agreement that our country’s leading diplomats, scientists, and intelligence professionals negotiated,” he said.
Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh and Peter Cooney
Barack Obama calls Donald Trump’s decision to pull US out of Iran nuclear deal a ‘serious mistake
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/trump-iran-nuclear-deal-latest-obama-response-war-a8342256.html
He said Mr Trump's decision is 'misguided' in a Facebook post
Former US President Barack Obama has said President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the historic Iran nuclear deal signed during Mr Obama's time in office is "so misguided" and a "serious mistake".
In a lengthy Facebook post: "There are few issues more important to the security of the US than the potential spread of nuclear weapons, or the potential for even more destructive war in the Middle East. That’s why the US negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the first place".
Mr Trump has long criticised the deal and said earlier today that the deal did not go far enough in ensuring Tehran's compliance and said the US would be withdrawing from it. Iran is a "regime of great terror" and that "no action taken by the regime has been more dangerous than its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them," Mr Trump said.
"The reality is clear. The JCPOA is working – that is a view shared by our European allies, independent experts, and the current U.S. Secretary of Defense. The JCPOA is in America’s interest – it has significantly rolled back Iran’s nuclear program," Mr Obama wrote.
Though the Trump administration agreed Iran’s nuclear programme is a major threat, the president announced in October 2017 he would not re-certify a nuclear deal signed by Iran and six world powers. Despite the evidence provided by the United Nations on Tehran's compliance with the deal, Mr Trump said it was too lenient on Iran and has maintained the idea that the country has violated portions of it.
Not re-certifying the deal or abandoning it will open the door for harsher economic sanctions to be placed on the country, the mitigation of which was a key inducement for Iran to comply with the historic deal. What concerned many Washington insiders - and today's announcement may have proven them right - is that Mr Trump's newest hire as National Security Adviser John Bolton has been quite hawkish on pulling out of the deal as is new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has called the agreement "disastrous".
Mr Obama countered that the agreement is a "model" for what this kind of diplomacy should look like, citing the verification and testing procedures in place within the accord as proof. Though the former president encouraged debate on the Iran nuclear deal, he said it "should be informed by facts" and went on to outline several key points of the agreement including that it has worked in rolling back Tehran's nuclear programme. "Iran has destroyed the core of a reactor that could have produced weapons-grade plutonium; removed two-thirds of its centrifuges (over 13,000) and placed them under international monitoring; and eliminated 97 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium – the raw materials necessary for a bomb," Mr Obama said.
"Walking away from the [Iran deal] turns our back on America’s closest allies, and an agreement that our country’s leading diplomats, scientists, and intelligence professionals negotiated," he wrote in a rare directly political message in his post-term time.
He noted that there will always be some changes from one administration to the next in a democracy, but he said "the consistent flouting" of multilateral agreements by Mr Trump "risks eroding America’s credibility, and puts us at odds with the world’s major powers".
He was likely referring to the Paris Agreement on climate change, which the US also signed under Mr Obama's second term in 2015. The global accord was signed by nearly 200 countries in an effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions and contain global warming to 2 C. Mr Trump announced in June 2017 that the US had begun the withdrawal process from the deal because it put American workers at an "economic disadvantage".
Mr Obama also tied the deal to US relations with North Korea and attempting to stem the hermit kingdom's nuclear ambitions. "At a time when we are all rooting for diplomacy with North Korea to succeed, walking away from the JCPOA risks losing a deal that accomplishes – with Iran – the very outcome that we are pursuing with the North Koreans," he wrote.
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Mr Trump is expected to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a time and date yet to be publicly announced. The meeting will come just weeks after Mr Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in signed a peace agreement in an elaborate ceremony in the Demilitarised Zone on the border in the divided peninsula.
Iran's leader Hassan Rouhani has instructed the country's atomic agency to prepare to enrich uranium and said Mr Trump's announcement constituted "a psychological war, we won’t allow [him] to win".
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/08/obama-says-trumps-decision-on-iran-was-misguided.html
Obama says Trump's decision on Iran was 'misguided'
6 Hours Ago
CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera reports that former President Obama has responded to President Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran deal.
Iranian president slams Trump's decision to exit nuclear deal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cihB6RKpylw
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivered a national address from Tehran shortly after President Trump announced the U.S. will leave the 2015 nuclear deal that lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran abandoning its nuclear program. Rouhani said Iran would negotiate with other countries that are party to the deal. Watch his address here.
Gutfeld on Trump withdrawing from Iran deal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7LKf15ZJaU
The Mind of Donald Trump
Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/
Trump's Mental Health: Is Pathological Narcissism the Key to Trump's Behavior?
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/trump-and-the-pathology-of-narcissism-w474896
Diagnosing the president was off-limits to experts – until a textbook case entered the White House
The most current iteration of the DSM classifies narcissistic personality disorder as: "A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts." A diagnosis would also require five or more of the following traits:
1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., "Nobody builds walls better than me"; "There's nobody that respects women more than I do"; "There's nobody who's done so much for equality as I have").
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love ("I alone can fix it"; "It's very hard for them to attack me on looks, because I'm so good-looking").
3. Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions ("Part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich").
4. Requires excessive admiration ("They said it was the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl").
5. Has a sense of entitlement ("When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy").
6. Is interpersonally exploitative (see above).
7. Lacks empathy, is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others ("He's not a war hero . . . he was captured. I like people that weren't captured").
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her ("I'm the president, and you're not").
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes ("I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters").
NPD was first introduced as a personality disorder by the DSM in 1980 and affects up to six percent of the U.S. population. It is not a mood state but rather an ingrained set of traits, a programming of the brain that is thought to arise in childhood as a result of parenting that either puts a child on a pedestal and superficially inflates the ego or, conversely, withholds approval and requires the child to single-handedly build up his or her own ego to survive. Either way, this impedes the development of a realistic sense of self and instead fosters a "false self," a grandiose narrative of one's own importance that needs constant support and affirmation – or "narcissistic supply" – to ward off an otherwise prevailing sense of emptiness. Of all personality disorders, NPD is among the least
responsive to treatment for the obvious reason that narcissists typically do not, or cannot, admit that they are flawed.
Trump's childhood seems to suggest a history of "pedestal" parenting. "You are a king," Fred Trump told his middle child, while also teaching him that the world was an unforgiving place and that it was important to "be a killer." Trump apparently got the message: He reportedly threw rocks at a neighbor's baby and bragged about punching a music teacher in the face. Other kids from his well- heeled Queens neighborhood of Jamaica Estates were forbidden from playing with him, and in school he got detention so often that it was nicknamed "DT," for "Donny Trump." When his father found his collection of switchblades, he sent Donald upstate to New York Military Academy, where he could be controlled while also remaining aggressively alpha male. "I think his father would have fit the category [of narcissistic]," says Michael D'Antonio, author of The Truth About Trump. "I think his mother probably would have. And I even think his paternal grandfather did as well. These are very driven, very ambitious people."