Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” the host cast doubt on President Donald Trump’s ability to negotiate a “more stringent” nuclear deal with Iran.
Zakaria claimed former presidential candidate Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) was proven right by Trump’s decision to pull out of the current deal with Iran.
Zakaria said, “Jeb Bush said that Donald Trump would be a chaos president. Well, this week Trump lived up to the billing choosing to defy virtually the entire world, including America’s closest European allies, and raising tensions in the most unstable part of the world already, the Middle East. It’s hard to understand the rationale behind Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. If Iran is as dangerous and maligned an actor as he says, surely it’s best to have its nuclear program frozen at a preliminary level and monitored 24/7 for years and years. The chance of getting Tehran to agree to more stringent terms is close to zero.”
He continued, “So if there’s a strategy behind Trump’s move, it is probably regime change. His closest advisers have long championed regime change.”
He added, “Iran is a complicated country with a complicated regime. It has moderate elements within it that were clearly hoping the nuclear deal would be a path to integration and normalization with the world. But Iran has always had a strong, hard-line element that has believed that America could never be trusted, that the Saudis were mortal foes and that self-reliance, autocracy, and ideology was the only strategy for self-preservation and Donald Trump has just proved them right.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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