Obama Officials To EU: How Are You Going To Counter Trump On The Iran Deal?

Secretary of State John Kerry waves to members of the audience as he departs after speaking at the State Department in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016. Stepping into a raging diplomatic argument, Kerry staunchly defended the Obama administration's decision to allow the U.N. Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal and warned that Israel's very future as a democracy is at stake. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

It’s such a strange thing that the Obama administration won’t leave the national stage. What with former Attorney General Eric Holder working on gerrymandering; former Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton whining about the Iran deal and how American voters hate women, respectively; and the former president himself criticizing the Trump administration’s decision to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the dust, you’d think their opinion on these matters still mattered.

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Newsflash guys: your legacy is receding and shifting and it might benefit you to just roll with those changes and promote the positives going forward.

But no, they’re even delegating the continued resistance — particularly to the Iran deal decision — to their underlings, and those people (ever conscious of the Logan Act) are using the media to urge nations to fight against the United States president.

Read that sentence again. Because it is, in fact, what they’re doing. Crazy, right?

The European Union and the rest of the international community, she said, would “preserve this nuclear deal.” The question is how. Notwithstanding an abundance of kvetching, European powers have not yet shown Mr. Trump that he has anything to fear from ignoring their wishes.

But mere words aren’t going to dissuade this White House. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has treated Europe like a doormat, questioning the value of NATO, ridiculing the mission of the European Union and dismissing European exhortations on policy matters.

Acknowledging Iran’s compliance and continuing to do business with Iran without imposing sanctions would mitigate the effect of the White House’s sanctions and make it easier for advocates of the deal in Tehran to make their case.

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That sounds a lot like aiding and abetting a foreign enemy to me. This is a country, after all, that just burned a little paper American flag (a great metaphor if there ever was one) upon hearing the U.S. wanted to strike a new deal with them because the old one, created by the former administration, didn’t really benefit the U.S.

But it did benefit the European Union, which is what these two former Obama officials are counting on. They likely won’t be successful in their pleas — European leadership has almost surely accepted that new administrations get to call their own shots and the EU will have new opportunities as a result.

It remains to be seen when Obama and company will finally accept that same reality.

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