His Tuesday address to the U.N. General Assembly will be remembered for the mocking laughter that followed his claim that the Trump administration has, so far, “accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.”
It didn’t get much better the next day: Trump chaired a session of the U.N. Security Council on weapons of mass destruction and nonproliferation, hoping to gin up support for his administration’s hard-line stance on the Iran nuclear deal. “This horrible, one-sided deal allowed Iran to continue its path toward a bomb and gave the regime a cash lifeline when they needed it the most,” Trump complained. “They were in big, big trouble. They needed cash. We gave it to them.”
Instead, virtually every other member country took turns scolding the United States for its undermining of the nuclear deal with Tehran. Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran deal and reimposition of sanctions on Iran was condemned by politicians ranging from the president of Peru to the vice president of the Ivory Coast to the foreign minister of Kazakhstan.
Bolivian President Evo Morales launched the most scathing attack, citing decades of malign American interference in the Middle East and then lashing out at Trump for acts such as separating migrant parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border. The United States, Morales said, “could not care less about human rights or justice." Trump could only thank Morales for his remarks.
Trump’s harsh rhetoric and unilateral decision-making have allowed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to play the role of the law-abiding victim, adhering to the terms of an agreement that the White House was recklessly casting aside.
“The U.S. president finds himself deprived of leverage, while Rouhani is the one invoking the legitimacy and legality of the international system the United States built. This is no happy occurrence,” wrote David Wade of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He added that “Trump has isolated the United States instead of isolating Iran.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/27/trump-becomes-punchline-un/?utm_term=.23cd06c64353
It didn’t get much better the next day: Trump chaired a session of the U.N. Security Council on weapons of mass destruction and nonproliferation, hoping to gin up support for his administration’s hard-line stance on the Iran nuclear deal. “This horrible, one-sided deal allowed Iran to continue its path toward a bomb and gave the regime a cash lifeline when they needed it the most,” Trump complained. “They were in big, big trouble. They needed cash. We gave it to them.”
Instead, virtually every other member country took turns scolding the United States for its undermining of the nuclear deal with Tehran. Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran deal and reimposition of sanctions on Iran was condemned by politicians ranging from the president of Peru to the vice president of the Ivory Coast to the foreign minister of Kazakhstan.
Bolivian President Evo Morales launched the most scathing attack, citing decades of malign American interference in the Middle East and then lashing out at Trump for acts such as separating migrant parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border. The United States, Morales said, “could not care less about human rights or justice." Trump could only thank Morales for his remarks.
Trump’s harsh rhetoric and unilateral decision-making have allowed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to play the role of the law-abiding victim, adhering to the terms of an agreement that the White House was recklessly casting aside.
“The U.S. president finds himself deprived of leverage, while Rouhani is the one invoking the legitimacy and legality of the international system the United States built. This is no happy occurrence,” wrote David Wade of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He added that “Trump has isolated the United States instead of isolating Iran.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/27/trump-becomes-punchline-un/?utm_term=.23cd06c64353
