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A few thoughts on U.S. decision to axe Iranian nuclear deal
By Phil Gurski May 14, 2018
I fear there is a lot happening behind the scenes and I am not so sure it is all true. JCPOA may not have been perfect but, as Winston Churchill once said, jaw-jaw is better than war-war.
Iran President Hassan Rouhani and U.S. President Donald Trump. Photographs courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
OTTAWA—I must confess that I hesitated quite a bit before putting pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?) on this topic. I was sitting in a Maple Leaf Lounge at LaGuardia Airport in New York when CNN broadcast its ‘breaking news’ coverage of U.S. President Donald Trump nixing U.S. commitment to the JCPOA (as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program is known). This move was about as surprising as snow in Ottawa in February so I am not so sure how ‘breaking’ it was. Nevertheless, I had decided not to write about it for the following reasons (among others): (a) a ton of stuff has already been produced and I was not confident I could add much. (b) I am no longer an Iran specialist (I was once: for 20 years I was the senior Iran analyst at both CSE and CSIS so I do know something about that land. Alas, that knowledge is at least a decade out of date). (c) I know squat about nuclear programs (squat=very little).
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