“Mr. President, how does this America safer?” she said. “How does this make American safer?”
Trump gathered his thoughts for a moment, then just restated the question in the form of an assertion.
“This will make America much safer,” he said, before getting up for the table on which he signed the memorandum.
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The president’s inability to answer the most basic question about his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement is indicative of why many experts question the wisdom of doing so in the first place. Under the Joint Cooperation Plan of Action (JCPOA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency could regularly inspect Iran’s nuclear program to make sure that it is for peaceful purposes. By all accounts, that process was working. But now that Trump has pulled the U.S. out, it’s unclear what will come next.
During a speech that preceded the memorandum signing, Trump struck a threatening tone, at one point vowing that “if the regime continues its nuclear aspirations, it will have bigger problems than it has ever had before.”
