The Trump Doctrine: bully allies, suck up to dictators and reverse anything Obama did
by digby
It's not complicated:
Sir Kim Darroch described the move as an act of "diplomatic vandalism", according to the Mail on Sunday.
It says the memo was written after the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appealed to the US in 2018 to stick with the nuclear deal.
Under that agreement Iran agreed to limit its sensitive nuclear activities.
It would also allow in international inspectors in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.
However, President Trump did not think that the deal went far enough.
The newspaper reports that after Mr Johnson returned to the UK from the US, Sir Kim wrote that President Trump appeared to be abandoning the nuclear deal for "personality reasons" because the pact had been agreed by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
The British ambassador is said to have highlighted splits amongst US presidential advisors and that the White House did not have a "day-to-day" strategy of what to do following withdrawal from the deal.
The paper reports that Sir Kim wrote a memo to Mr Johnson, saying: "The outcome illustrated the paradox of this White House: you got exceptional access, seeing everyone short of the president; but on the substance, the administration is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons - it was Obama's deal.
"Moreover, they can't articulate any 'day-after' strategy; and contacts with State Department this morning suggest no sort of plan for reaching out to partners and allies, whether in Europe or the region."
[...]
The first memos, which emerged a week ago, saw the then UK ambassador refer to the Trump administration as "clumsy and inept".
He seems like a very perspicacious fellow to me.
His view of the Iran deal was the view of some partisan idiot at a Trump rally. He believes he can make "deals" that only favor the US and in some cases that may even be possible. The new NAFTA deal seems to have worked that way, but the improvements were only on the margins and the other two countries are led by mature people who understood it made more sense to appease him on this one.
But Iran? Nope. They have zero incentive to come back and do a deal with a country led by an imbecile who has made America's signature on a treaty not worth the paper it's written on. After watching Trump treat Kim Jong Un like his best buddy after he succeeded in becoming a nuclear power, the lesson is very clear.
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