During the later years of the Obama era, I had many posts with this title. Evidence was ample that Iran had not done much beyond complying with the narrowest interpretation of the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. There'd certainly been no change of heart, no desire on Iran's part to begin to really act like a well-intentioned member of the international community. When two US Navy patrol boats were captured by Iran in the Persian Gulf, their crew members photographed on their knees with their hands behind their heads, on the day Obama was to give the State of the Union address, or when the Ayatollah Khameini or top-ranking Quds Force or Revolutionary Guards spokesmen continued the rhetoric about the US being Iran's number one enemy, or when Iran continued to build ever-more powerful missiles, or when it would get caught shipping materiel to terrorist groups, I'd write a post with this title.
The reason was to hammer home a basic point of sensible foreign policy: you don't appease rogue regimes that have repeatedly declared that you are their enemy.
Pulling out of the JCPOA was one of the handful of laudable policy moves to come out of the Trump administration in my estimation.
But I feel pretty sure Trump did it from a transactional motivation rather than from adherence to the above-mentioned principle. He thinks in terms of deals, and saw the JCPOA as a bad one.
And then he put his signature inconsistency on display by making an abrupt turn from longstanding US policy toward North Korea and setting up and participating in the summits with Kim Jong-Un. We had to listen to gushing rhetoric about beautiful letters and North Korea's enormous potential, knowing full well there'd be no resulting change in that country's stance.
If the JCPOA was driven at least largely by Obama's and Kerry's narcissistic determination to be seen as visionary peacemakers, Trump's overtures to Kim were that determination on steroids.
And, no surprise here, it was all for naught:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to expand his nuclear arsenal as he disclosed a list of high-tech weapons systems under development, saying the fate of relations with the United States depends on whether it abandons its hostile policy, state media reported Saturday.
Kim’s comments during a key meeting of the ruling party this week were seen as applying pressure on the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has called Kim a “thug” and has criticized his summits with President Donald Trump.
The Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying the “key to establishing new relations between (North Korea) and the United States is whether the United States withdraws its hostile policy.”
The Kim regime has the same basic stance it's had for decades:
He again called the U.S. his country’s “main enemy.”
“Whoever takes office in the U.S., its basic nature and hostile policy will never change,” he said.
So when some drool-besotted Trumpist starts in with the list of supposedly great accomplishments of the Very Stable Genius and gets to this subject, you can respond, "I think we can take that one off."
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