Subject: Re: They deserve each other
1) Vance just lost the Orthodox Jewish vote and money forever (those guys have loooooong memories), and

2) Someone should tell Bibi that when you lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas, and

3) I told folks here that Trump would sell out Israel in a heartbeat (see Scorpion and the Frog). Done and done.

I am beginning to think that Trump fundamentally misunderstood the assignment here. At least as far as the Iran hawks understood it.

Trump is acting as if he thought this was about nuclear weapons. That the primary concern of everyone involved was that Iran might one day get a nuclear weapon, and that other concerns were secondary or even tertiary. Trump got a ton of love from the more hawkish side of the conservative base and from Israel supporters over his strident criticism of Obama's Iran policy and the JCPOA - and I think he internalized the idea that his base's criticism was focused on the JCPOA not doing enough to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon one day.

But that's wrong.

Of course no one wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. But for most of the Iran hawks and Israel supporters, it was equally important (and perhaps more important) that Iran be subject to crippling sanctions and/or military reprisals because of all its non-nuclear threats. In fact, Iran's nuclear program was important in large part because it was the basis for having crippling sanctions that limited all the other ways that Iran was a bad actor in the region.

Put another way, the main problem with the JCPOA wasn't that it was a bad or flawed way to trade sanctions relief for Iran not having a nuke. Instead, it was that it was a terrible idea to trade sanctions relief for Iran not having a nuke. Any deal with Iran that gets them to give up their nuclear program in exchange for anything material economic relief would be a bad deal, because the most important thing is to never give them any material economic relief as long as they are an evil revolutionary terrorist regime. It's better to have them at liberty to pursue their nukes and suffer the anti-nuclear sanctions, than for them to actually give us what we want on nukes in exchange for sanctions relief.

I don't think Trump understood that. To be fair, I don't think that some of the critics of the JCPOA entirely understand that this is what their actual position is, either. But Trump clearly doesn't get it. It seems like he thinks that a non-nuclear Iran that is free of sanctions and therefore open for business is a good outcome. I don't think he realizes that the wing of the party that were his biggest supporters on the war will find it repellent if he solves Iran's nuclear threat by trading sanctions relief and economic benefits to get it.