Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Trump Crossed the Rubicon in Pull Out From Iran Nuclear Deal

Politics / Middle East May 13, 2018 - 03:42 PM GMT

By: Michael_T_Bucci

Politics

Trump crossed the Rubicon and the world is reacting. He decided to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) signed in 2015 by Iran, the United States, Germany and all permanent members of the Security Council (P5+1), the fruit of more than a decade of planning. He then lit another match handed him by John Bolton and the “war parties” in Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh to widen sanctions by including any nation doing business with Iran (“secondary sanctions”).


In short, unless JCPOA is perpetuated in defiance of Trump by treaty signatories minus the U.S., the agreement will be void. The Iran treaty withdrawal, together with the imposition of sanctions against Iran and any nation violating the Trump mandate has forcibly quickened the turn of the global wheel that already was heading away from American diktats to forge alternatives in global cooperative governance and more trustworthy alliances.

Trump’s latest shove of the wheel could now enlist the strongest EU nations (Germany, and France) to assist this momentum away from America, which in the real world will further isolate America from ninety-five percent of the world’s population. But in Trump’s world he aims to control it in the style of world autocrat, iconoclast and renegade through bullying, insults, sanctions, Tomahawk missiles and, if necessary, threatening to use “The Bomb”.

The headline at Brussel’s EurActiv after the Trump announcement read: “Trump becomes number one threat to European economy” (May 9). “Trump’s action has inflamed a transatlantic relationship already strained by his threat to impose tariffs on European products, along with his 2017 withdrawal from the Paris climate accord” (Politico, May 9). Germany, with France and Britain, has said it remains committed to the nuclear deal and has no intention of breaking off business ties with Iran as long as the Islamic Republic upholds its side of the agreement (Deutsche Welle, May 11). Some 120 German companies run operations with their own staff in Iran and some 10,000 German businesses trade with the country.

Der Spiegel (May 12) wrote “Clever resistance is necessary, as sad and absurd as that may sound. Resistance against America.”

At the time of Trump’s announcement, former Fox News staffer and US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell tweeted: “As @realDonaldTrump said, US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” That dictatorial command might seem good international diplomacy to Fox News fans, but was taken correctly by Chancellor Angela Merkel and most Germans as an insult to their leaders, industry, sovereignty and nation.

Whether or not Mrs. Merkel’s meeting with Vladimir Putin results in an agreement to work together to uphold the Iran accord, it presently remains the desire of Russia, France, Britain and Germany to defend their respective “interests” against American threats that have no basis in international law, let alone morality. Quite possibly it now has become all too clear to Europe that it needs the protection of another superpower (like Russia) to defend itself against Donald J. Trump.

Furthermore, as the largest buyer of Iran oil, China certainly isn't going to passively watch their lifeblood interrupted without a strong response.

Trump is resolving for Europeans one nagging question: “Can Trump be trusted?” As it stands the answer is NO, Trump cannot be trusted. And since Donald J. Trump is president of the United States and represents it, it translates to the United States cannot be trusted.

Since crossing the Rubicon, the future is uncertain but scenarios should be examined and one is this:

A sort of "mini-Axis" could evolve based, for now, solely on the sanction issues, but having the potential to enlarge into a full-Axis as more destructive maneuvers by Trump catapults most of the developed world (West and East) to form stronger ties and alliances with each other despite their preexisting differences ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend"). One Axis foreseeable is: EU-Russia-China vs. US-Israel-Saudi Arabia.

Trump is a president that was elected by less than one-half of voters. He will not be held entirely responsible for whatever will happen to the United States in the future. The Trump voters must share in that responsibility.

May 9 might be looked upon by future historians as the “official” beginning of the end of the American Empire.

If Donald J. Trump isn’t evicted from office by Americans, the world will evict America from the global community.

(c) 2018 Michael T. Bucci

Michael T. Bucci is a retired public relations executive from New Jersey currently residing in New England.


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in