Two new lows

President Trump has hit two new lows: his racist comment on the origins of some American immigrants and his renewed threat to abrogate the Iran nuclear deal.

Neither is a surprise. His racism has long been apparent. What else was all that “birther” stuff about where Barack Obama was born? He believes, with good reason, that racial prejudice appeals to his almost entirely white base. He has reportedly been saying so to those he has talked to privately since his comments became public. I have no doubt he is correct.

There is just no getting around the hard fact: more than one-third of the American electorate either holds racist views or doesn’t regard racism as a political disqualification. Never mind that African immigrants to America are more educated than its native born, or that Norwegian immigrants to the US fared remarkably poorly. Prejudice ignores the facts.

On the Iran nuclear deal, the President is promising to withdraw unless he gets satisfaction within four months on two issues I regard as important: the deal’s “sunset” (i.e. expiration clauses) and inspection of Iranian nuclear sites. But neither problem, important as they are, can be solved with a unilateral withdrawal four months from now.

It has been apparent since the conclusion of the agreement that something would have to be done about its expiration. But trying to do that now, 7 years before the first of the expirations, is impossible: the Europeans will not go along with a US threat to withdraw and reimpose sanctions at this stage in the deal’s implementation. They might do so as expiration approaches, but they are correct in thinking there is no urgency about the matter.

The US attempt to impose urgency will fail. The Iranians will then have a choice: continue to implement the agreement with the Europeans, or withdraw and make a rush for nuclear weapons. Either move will weaken the US. We could go to war in a last-ditch effort to prevent Iran from going nuclear, but the odds of success in that endeavor are not good and the ramifications for the region are disastrous. I’d bet though on the Iranians continuing to implement the deal, making European support for extending it far less likely and any US rush to war unjustifiable.

As for Iranian military sites, the issues involved are serious and complicated. But neither the US nor the Europeans have exhausted the provisions in the deal to press for inspections to ensure that these sites are not in violation. They should do that first. Trump’s threat all but guarantees they won’t.

The threat to withdraw from the nuclear deal is cast as an ultimatum to the Europeans, not to Iran, to fix these two main issues: expiration and inspection of all sites the International Atomic Energy Agency requests. It ignores the option the Europeans have to continue the agreement without the US. This is Trump’s frequently repeated error in negotiation: he threatens to act on his own best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) but ignores the other guy’s. The result is that he rarely gets what he wants. The other guy has options too. In this case, both Iran and the Europeans can do better without us than we can by withdrawing.

Trump is still campaigning against Barack Obama: both his statement on the nuclear deal, which refers explicitly to his predecessor, and his racist remarks should be read in that light. The result is two new lows that weaken America’s standing in the world.