Dell Weisbert

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

War Trump and Surrender Trump are the same Trump.

[The Reagan Caucus @NewReaganCaucus]

Trump, Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner negotiated with Iran and Russia and came out of those negotiations thinking they were with reasonable people who made a lot of good points.

They should never be in charge of anything in national politics again.

[Gregg Nunziata @greggnunziata]

America's worst senator, showing exactly why he's unfit for the office he holds.

[Ed Whelan @EdWhelanEPPC]

Jack Goldsmith: "The President is Legally Barred from Waiving Iranian Sanctions as Pledged in the Iran MOU"
1. Federal law--namely, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015--bars Donald Trump from immediately waiving sanctions against Iran.
2. Trump will probably violate the law and get away with it.
3. "It was unthinkable in 2015 that INARA would be deployed against a Republican president who sought in an agreement related to Iran’s nuclear program to waive sanctions against Iran. And before President Trump began his military action against Iran in February, it was unthinkable that he, a famous critic of the JCPOA, would be making such an agreement. But here we are."
Link to Executive Functions post in reply.

[John McCormack @McCormackJohn]

Sanctions relief that is illegal under U.S. law

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Welp, I think we're done here.

Trump himself is now saying he buckled under the pressure of Hormuz.

It's as bad as it could possibly be. He's saying aloud that Iran can have anything it wants because America can't afford the staring contest.

If this is his own explanation in his own words, then the fact that the sanctions relief is front-loaded...suddenly becomes important. The fact that the inspections regime that will verify compliance will be negotiated by an American side that has already admitted defeat, that needs this more than the opponent needs it...is now significant. And the fact that the proxy system is now recognized as legitimate by the United States -- is suddenly exactly the disaster you feared it might be.

And the fact that America has declared aloud that it's not actually capable of imposing its will even in the world's most vital energy chokepoints, causing its allies in the Gulf to already begin to seek a new accommodation with Iran -- makes all of this worse than Obama and worse than the JCPOA.

Remember: the great unfixable flaw of the JCPOA that none of its boosters ever had a good answer for was that it merely kicked the can down the road. It solved nothing.

Trump's deal, as of this moment, is not even close to accomplishing so much.

"Iran never won a war and never lost a negotiation," Trump famously said of Obama's deal (as a reporter reminded him at today's press conference). Ironic that the Iranians would win a negotiation most spectacularly against a man who styles himself the greatest negotiator to ever grace the White House.

So what does it all mean?

It means that in the coming years, nuclear programs will sprout like mushrooms after the rain throughout the Middle East. It means that many nations will now build out new and larger ballistic missile arsenals.

It means that the state system will give way before the march of the region's transnational ideological axes. Minorities will again be trampled, new wars will be fought by stronger states to dominate the power vacuums within weaker ones.

You're thinking of Israel in Lebanon -- but that's just a specific campaign against a specific enemy. Think Turkey, which right now occupies a region of Syria vastly larger than Israel's presence in Lebanon. Think heightened Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen and a new influx of money and guns to the different sides in Libya.

It means, in other words, that we will have a few more wars to fight, a few more technologies to invent to deal with this new age of cheap missiles and drones -- and also of supersonic Chinese missiles bearing nuclear warheads that Iran will eventually, inevitably, be capable of deploying against us.

And it didn't have to be this bad. (And maybe, when he's heard all the criticism, it won't be.) He could have left something, anything, to concede later. He could have kept the Iranians a little bit in the dark, just a smidgen, as to just how defeated America feels.

Israel's position in all this is simple, and more or less unchanged from last week. America gave us more than we had a right to ask for. But we may be going it alone from here out.

Dust off the nukes. Maybe test one somewhere far away from anywhere. Quadruple the interceptor production lines, double the size of the Mossad and the Air Force. And no, don't let Hezbollah breathe, not for a second.

It's the 1960s again. And Israel will have to defeat a couple more enemies before it can once again eke out a few decades of peace.

[Jack Goldsmith @jacklgoldsmith]

Why (I think) domestic law prevents Trump from waiving Iran sanctions as contemplated by the new MOU; what the USG counterarguments will be; and why the legal bar is likely unenforceable.
https://t.co/sFo7guV48N

[Jay Nordlinger @jaynordlinger]

Reading that tweet, I feel he is a lock for the nomination.

[Eddie Fishman @edwardfishman]

@AaronBMacLean It is worse in every respect. In the MOU, Iran makes no nuclear concessions while receiving even greater financial benefits than they got in the JCPOA.

[Dell Weisbert @DellComando]

@nfergus You’re pathetic bro. You know this is a giant shit sandwich. But you just can’t admit it nor can you bring yourself to admit that dear fuhrer deserves extreme criticism for it.

[Institute for the Study of War @TheStudyofWar]

KEY TAKEAWAY: The leaked text of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, if accurate, indicates that Iran has emerged from the conflict in a stronger strategic position. ⬇️🧵(1/7)

[Robert A. Pape @ProfessorPape]

Trump admits he buckled to the pressure of a global economic collapse

This is another way saying Iran has all the leverage —and will going forward

[Dell Weisbert @DellComando]

@DastDn Oh ye of little faith.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Btw, Social Security was enacted in 1935. Guess how many bills broadly cutting Social Security benefits that Republican majorities have put to a House or Senate vote?

The answer is ZERO. In Social Security's 91 years, GOP majorities have brought ZERO broad cuts to the floor.

If Republicans have really been hell-bent on slashing Social Security benefits, you'd think there would have been some vote on some partisan GOP bill over the past 91 years.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

Bob Odenkirk has returned as Saul Goodman in a new video celebrating 250 years of America.

[FIRE @TheFIREorg]

The fight over American slavery was also a fight over free speech.

When Congress tried to silence anti-slavery petitions through the gag rule, abolitionists like John Quincy Adams fought not just for emancipation, but for the right to be heard.

[LoLNothingMatters @DastDn]

Vance leaked war plans to Erdogan in order to spike them, stone-walled the war effort, & negotiated a deal amounting to unconditional surrender by the US.

I can't readily think of a historical parallel. Henry Wallace, maybe. Or Buchanan's actions to strengthen the South pre-war.

[alex kershaw @kershaw_alex]

Happy 99th birthday, Harold Bray, the last living survivor of the USS Indianapolis. Of 1,196 men who served with him, just 316 survived the sinking. He is the last breathing. See more https://t.co/EEg00P06y6

[Peter Spiliakos @petespiliakos]

The only parts of the deal with Iran that are real are releasing frozen assets to Iran, lifting sanctions on Iran, and restraining Israeli counterattacks against Hezbollah in return for Iran opening the strait that had been open before the strait.

What an idiot mess.