At this point, everyone on the planet with the exception of United States President Donald Trump and his own, perverse, neocon circle, must see that the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been an unmitigated disaster. Let us broadly review the situation:

• In 2015, Iran, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and the European Union signed the JCPOA, limiting Iran’s nuclear development program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. This agreement was praised across the globe by nearly every world leader, with the Zionist entity (also known as Israel) and Saudi Arabia being the two major objectors. The JCPOA went into effect, and trade with Iran and the world increased greatly, to the benefit of everyone.
• President Barack Obama was in office when the JCPOA was agreed to and signed. In January of 2017, the erratic and unstable Trump, who harbors an irrational hatred of his predecessor, became president, and has attempted to undo all of Obama’s accomplishments. He has worked tirelessly to deprive 21,000,000 U.S. citizens of health care, which has not been easy, and is yet to be accomplished (if such a disgraceful action can be called an ‘accomplishment’). It wasn’t so difficult for him to withdraw from the JCPOA, thus voiding that agreement.
• The other signatories to the JCPOA begged Trump not to withdraw; he did so anyway, reinstated sanctions against Iran, and threatened the other parties to the agreement with sanctions if they continued to trade with Iran. Bowing to U.S. pressure, each nation, except Russia and China, ceased all such trade.
• Trump demands that Iran renegotiate the agreement, which Iran’s leaders have, legitimately, refused to do. Had Trump maintained the JCPOA, and expressed to Iran’s leaders that he would like to reconsider some of its provisions, his request might have been favorably received. But as Iran’s leaders have accurately pointed out, sanctions are economic terrorism and, like the U.S., Iran will not negotiate with terrorists.
• Iran, demonstrating remarkably good faith, maintained its commitments to the JCPOA for over a year after the U.S. and the European nations violated it, giving the European parties sufficient time to decide how to circumvent threatened U.S. sanctions. When they were unable to do so, Iran slowly began enriching uranium at a rate higher than allowed by the agreement. The U.S., Britain, France, Germany and the UK all responded with horror. How could Iran do such a thing? They knew its leaders couldn’t be trusted! This is an internationally-approved agreement that Iran is violating!

For some bizarre reason, they were not quite so astounded and shocked when the U.S. violated the agreement, and seemed to conveniently ignore the fact that they had done so, too, long before Iran did. It is completely counter to reason and logic to expect an agreement between eight (8) parties to remain effective when five (5) of them (the U.S., Germany, France, Britain and the UE) have all violated it. Before those nations point the finger of accusation at Iran, they need to clean up their own houses of government.

As a result of U.S. actions, tensions in the Persian Gulf have been growing, and reached a dangerous level when a U.S. drone flew into Iranian airspace and was shot down. A few weeks later, Trump reported that the U.S. had shot down an Iranian drone that flew too close to a U.S. ship (which was in the Gulf where it had no legitimate business to be).  However, Iranian officials reported that all of their drones had returned safely, and Trump & Co. haven’t bothered to show any evidence whatsoever that the U.S. did, in fact, shoot down an Iranian drone.

Based on what has been revealed about the Trump White House, how his closest aides discreetly remove from his desk papers that they don’t want him to see, how they brief him with the briefest of information due to his limited interest and attention span, and his own narcissistic personality, it’s likely that, enraged that Iran dared shoot out of the sky a drone of the mighty U.S., he ordered that the U.S. retaliate in like manner. Some aide with a brain in his or her head, recognizing that shooting down an Iranian drone in Iranian airspace could easily be seen as an act of war, probably invented the fairy tale that a drone had been shut down, advised Trump, thereby satisfying his lust for revenge.

The military went along with it, realizing, perhaps, that a war against Iran would be a worldwide disaster. So Trump has been told what he wanted to hear (he appears to have no ability to discern truth from fiction; he recently announced that he was a first responder on September 11!), a war has been averted at least for now, and the U.S. continues to be the laughing stock of the world, since everyone except Trump seems to know that no Iranian drone was shot down.

What will be next? Will the U.S. invade Iran? Surely, there are some people in U.S. government circles who are not willing to shove the world into that deadly abyss, and are in a position to prevent it.

Will Israel get tired of waiting for the U.S. to invade, and do so itself, knowing that the U.S. will come to its aid? One thinks Israeli officials would need some pretext for doing so, but they can certainly draw on the U.S.’s many examples of creating some false flag to start a war.

Will the European signatories to the JCPOA finally create some way to circumvent threatened U.S. sanctions, or will they simply develop some strength of character and advise the U.S. that it can’t tell them how they will run their countries?

With the U.S. democratic farce of a presidential election just over a year away, Trump may do anything, however deadly and irrational, to try to gain another four-year term. Should he not war with Iran before then, his successor (one desperately hopes the Democrats don’t do anything sufficiently stupid to ensure another four years in the White House for Trump, as they did in 2016), will, one hopes, re-embrace the JCPOA.

But the next presidential inauguration isn’t until January of 2020; seventeen months is a long time for someone as unpredictable and unhinged as Trump to have his finger on the war button. We can only hope and pray that he doesn’t decide to push it.

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