‘This Is Trump’s War’: Iran Strikes Come After Years of Animus Towards Obama
Saturday bombing mission wouldn’t have happened if 2015 nuclear deal had been preserved
Donald Trump’s decision to unleash the US military against multiple targets in Iran came only after more than a decade of foreign policy fumbles fueled by a deep animosity towards one of his predecessors and one of that predecessor’s most important diplomatic achievements.
Trump announced Saturday evening that he had ordered US bombers to strike three targets in Iran associated with that nation’s nuclear program, and directly put the United States on the side militarily with Israel in Israel’s ongoing conflict with Iran.
However, that decision only came as a result of Trump’s longstanding bitterness towards Democratic president Barack Obama and Trump’s decision during his first administration to abandon Obama’s deal with Iran to arrest their nuclear ambitions.
That’s according to a chorus of foreign policy experts and journalists, who began posting on social media almost immediately following the announcement of the attack on Iran.
Further, a number even surfaced old social media posts by Trump in the years before he first ran for president the first time in which he baselessly accused Obama of planning to do the very thing he just actually did.
With efforts by key officials in his Cabinet — Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz — Obama reached an historic agreement in 2015 to halt Iran’s moves to build its own arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Under the arrangement, officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran would give up its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions and other considerations.
That arrangement — although controversial at the time with many on the political right — ultimately proved successful in achieving its goals.
Trump, who held open hostility towards Obama and helped lead the discredited and racist “birther” conspiracy that Obama was not truly an American citizen and was somehow an illegitimate president, particularly criticized the Iran deal during his first run for the White House and abrogated the arrangement once Trump was in office.
But the JCPOA was demonstrably successful, according to data a number of journalists and others posted online in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s Iran strikes.
Author, attorney and journalist Seth Abramson posted a chart clearly showing how Obama’s deal had ended Iran’s nuclear program but that program not only started, but gained steam, once Trump ended it.
“I wonder how many people realize that America is now literally at war *solely* because Trump hates black people,” Abramson said.
“Obama signed the Iran Nuclear Deal; Iran stopped enrichment; Trump ended the Deal to spite Obama; he was told enrichment would restart; it did … This is *Trump’s* war,” he added.
Barbara Boxer, the retired Democratic senator from California, echoed those sentiments when she posted: “In 2018 Trump tore up the nuclear containment deal with Iran that President Obama negotiated. Trump said he would engage all nations in a new deal. Wrong. He didn’t. So here we are.”
A number of journalists, influencers and others also re-surfaced a number of Trump’s social media posts going back more than a decade, in which he falsely accused Obama of plotting an attack on Iran to improve his flagging poll numbers and even bolster his 2012 reelection chances.
That includes Randi Mayer Singer, the successful Hollywood screenwriter and producer, best-known for the classic blockbuster, Mrs Doubtfire.
She has more than 150,000 followers on social media.
Meanwhile, the reality is that Trump’s own approval ratings have been cratering for months now, down to levels unseen before for a president this early in his term.
Another influencer reposted a Trump tweet from 2013 that perhaps particularly didn’t age well.
“Remember what I previously said—Obama will someday attack Iran to show how tough he is,” that nearly 12-year-old tweet said.
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