The whiplash that many observers have felt on learning of President Trump’s about-face on China’s ZTE telecom company from condemning it as violating US national security and violating sanctions rules by selling to North Korea and Iran has been pretty easily explained by our soon thereafter learning that China has provided a mere half a billion dollars to a project in Indonesia where Trump interests are deeply involved. This is probably the most blatant violation of the Emoluments Clause of the US constitution yet, but do not hold your breath that anything formal will come of it, despite widespread outrage. Rather his backers will accept that this is necessary for obtaining Chinese support in dealing with Kim Jong-In in the possible forthcoming summit. This is supposed to trump all other considerations.
Of course the supposed forthcoming summit and related events, such as the recent release of hostages held by North Korea, have been trumping Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, which has been praised by his supporters as an action that “fulfills a campaign promise” and thus just simply wonderful. However, a little noticed aspect of this in the US is triggering considerable reverberations abroad. It is the hypocrisy that while Trump seems to be blithely forgiving ZTE for breaking already in-place sanctions against Iran, he and members of his administration such as John Bolton have been unyielding to the Europeans that all of their companies must cease any economic dealings with Iran ASAP now that Trump has scuttled US participation in the deal, even though it is widely accepted in Europe that Iran is in full compliance with the deal. The spectacle of the freshly arrived US ambassador issuing an immediate “order” to German companies to immediately comply with US demands on this has raised especial hackles.
Pretty clearly the Europeans need to identify some budding Trump Organization project somewhere on the planet that they can dump a pile of money into so that their companies can get exemptions like ZTE has from having their markets in the US cut off if they continue to operate in Iran.
Barkley Rosser
Barkley:
One lawsuit brought on by Erwin Erwin Chemerinsky, “Zephyr Teachout and Laurence Tribe, as well Richard Painter and Norman Eisen (as well as other attorneys, including my former student Stuart McPhail).” Michael Dorf was dismissed in Federal Court.
NY District Judge George B. Daniels had this to say:
“This court will not tell Congress how it should or should not assert its power in responding the defendant’s alleged violations of the foreign Emoluments Clause,” he wrote. “In short, unless and until Congress speaks on this issue, plaintiffs’ foreign Emoluments Clause claims are not ripe for adjudication.”
Kind of similar to the outcome of Usury Law decision in which Brennan thought Congress would act and nothing happened.
A Maryland Federal Court ruled Maryland and D.C had standing to review the actions of Trump and whether he violated the emoluments clause. Hopefully , they can proceed and get a ruling. If so, it is no guarantee Congress will react.
I am surprised Chemerinsky could not proceed.
This is beyond the pale. Never, ever would I think to have seen this be allowed in the US. The GOP is beyond evil.
While Trump wavers with waivers……..
The observation to made concerning Trump’s decertification of JPCOA is: the US will take what they get from a deal, weaken the mark, then when it wants more [and the mark has already lost powers] they pull out and demand more. Iran should have spent the past 3 years enriching uranium and making plutonium!
The neocons wanted Obama to neuter Iran in exchange for giving up sanctions and “unfreezing $150B in Iranian assets.
The neocons want to neuter Kim, whatever US demands of Kim if he gives it will soon be followed with more demands………
Kim and his negotiators should look at what Bill Kristol’s writers want and recognize the deal will be shot to pieces after they give up enough so they cannot fight back……..
If the EU don’t see this they are toast.
Seems Kim ain’t so happy with South Korea rehearsing attacking him with the US today!
Follow on:
US lied about WMD’s in Iraq it is lying about Iran not complying!
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/14/1764279/-John-Bolton-threatens-European-allies-how-dare-they-live-up-to-their-word?detail=emaildkre
Same guy in both cases: Bolton!
ilsm,
Most of the harder line neocons opposed the JCPOA. Many of them are tied up with the GOP, and that party pretty much unanimously opposed it.
A difference between the Iraq case and now is that there was a lot of fake intelligence, plus dumb behavior by Saddam that had a lot of people, including Tony Blair in UK and a lot of Dems in the US, believing the Saddam had chemical weapons and was trying to get nuclear weapons, neither of which was true, whereas now everybody except total Trump toadies and propagandists out of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and UAE accept that Iran has been adhering to the JCPOA. It is far more widely understood that Trump is lying than it was understood that Bush was back in the day.
I can’t decide if this is a post about Trump’s hypocrisy (which is at this point “dog bites man”) or a defense of a theocratic police state. I wonder what the inmates of Evin prison think of the JCPOA? Ditto for the Iranian LBGT community or the Zoroastrians? Oh wait…
Little John,
Until you got to “Iranian” I thought you were discussing Israel or middle Alabama……….
While the Saudis are no better with LGBT than US evangelicals.
If you have standards apply them to ARAMCO!
And Yemen is a bona fide human tragedy on the order of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan……
Interesting from the National Interest:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/america-should-see-saudi-arabias-war-yemen-the-horror-it-25838
Yemen surpasses Syria as a humanitarian disaster, Mohamed bin Salman aka MbS as bad as or worse than Assad. But MbS has ARAMCO on his side so the US supports this tragedy, which aids al Qaeda!
Barkley Rosser,
I am not sure Trump and W are the only US’ers challenged by reality. The Yemen and Syria messes are Obama’s.
I hope the EU partners act in a better way than in 2003.
Well, Little John, it is quite likely that a high percentage, possibly even a majority, of those oppressed by the Iranian regime that you mention, support the JCPOA. However, they also probably support a civilian nuclear program in Iran as well. That was the reported poll position of the majority of anti-regime Greens in 2009 who rioted in the streets.
As it is, those in the Trump admin who think they are going to achieve regime change in Iran with all this, are as deluded as those in the Bush admin, including John Bolton, who thought they would bring about regime change in North Korea by getting out of the deal that Clinton had cut.
Ilsm,
Yes, US under Obama deeply at fault in Syria and Yemen.
There may have been support of the JCPOA among dissidents in 2009 due to the thought that the economy would turn around. Instead the money was has been spent on foreign adventurism. It’s just amusing to see the left defend one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
As for Ilsm I guess you’ve never been to a Birmingham or Montgomery PFLAG event. Probably never visited Tel Aviv either. The city is often described as one of the world’s most “gay friendly” cities. Yemen? I wonder what Iran’s role is?
Nobody here is “defending” the Iranian regime, certainly not with regard to its oppression of various groups, although the current government is at least somewhat milder than its predecessor led by Ahmadinejed on some matters. But, of course, hardliners cointnue to control the judiciaey, military, and police, so things remain pretty grim.
However, it has been in compliance with the JCPOA. Are you supporting the Trump withdrawal from that because you believe in a fantasy that this might lead to the overhrow of the regime and its replacement by some liberal secular democracy that will legalize gay marriage? The most likely near term political change would be renewee takeover by hardliners, or at least harder liners than are currwntly running the show there. And our pals in Saudi Arabia are almost certainly more oppressive than those in Iran, where women have never been banned from driving cars.
You are confusing two sets of opinions. I do not know what the opinions of those in prison now are, but I suspect that they do not oppose the nuclear deal by a majority. The view of the Greens in 2009 was quite clear: they opposed having nuclear weapons but supported civilian nuclear power. It has long been a demand of the US for Iran not even to have civilian nuclear power, although that is allowed under the NNPT to which Iran is a signatory. BTW, no weapons bur civilian nuclear power was the official position of the Iran government in 2009, as well as those rioting against it. A lot of Americans are really misinformed about public opinion there, which is both more pro-American while not necessarily supporting some of our official positions that some here think they support.
BTW, while the Saudis are screaming to high heaven that Iran is he main arms supplier and backer of the Houthis in Yemen, there is not much evidence of that. They are sympathetic, but most of the Houthi arms are supposedly left-over American ones, and it should be kept in mind that the Zaydi version of Shi’ism the Houthis practice is officially viewed as a heresy by the 12-iman Shia in Iran. But I suspect you did not know that, did you?
I don’t know about Ilsm, with whom I someitimes disagree, but I have been to Tel Aviv and some other parts of the Middle East. I have not been to a PFLAG events in Birmingham or Montgomery, but I have had close family members who are LGBTQ living in the Deep South, although not lately. If you want to lecture me on this stuff, you are going to come across as silly and seriously out of it.
LittleJ,
What Barkley said is my opinion, the run of the mill Shi’a are less radical than the average Sunni, while Saudi Arabia has more than the usual number of radical Salafis and even more radical outlier Salafis called Wahhabi.
If your standard of ‘worthy to war for’ is LBGT friendly, I disagree. I have a real problem with liberal interventionism as a cult meme, using fake humanity to “sell” organized industrial age murder that always results in failed states I find abhorrent.
While those rioters you see on Fox are in the Salafi area of southeast Iran likely as pushed by the CIA and Saudi money as Israel claims the Gazans are tools of Hamas.
I, a Yankee, have a lot of time in the military communities in central Alabama. No, I never went to any PLFAGLEs. Until recently your military was officially unfriendly (most of my time), it remains largely a straight affair unofficially.
As to Tel Aviv, they are all up and running forward with the Goebbels forms of making Palestinians out to be subhuman……..
I do enjoy the clever injection of KSA argument to somehow illustrate some moral equivalency between the USA and Iran. In terms of evidence of Iranian weapons in Yemen may I suggest you read Ralph Salvesbergs article in the latest Breaking Defense. In terms of Iran only supporting fellow Islamic sect members I am wondering if the Iranian theocracy believes Assad is a religious role model? Who knows maybe Iran will legalize liquor and celebrate Christmas in an ecumenical gesture towards the Alawites. As for the gay issue I am curious about how many in the gay community support an agreement that enriches a regime that considers homosexuality a capital crime?
LJ,
I checked out your Salvesbergs source. So he is probably right that the pathetic and occasional rockets fired at Riyadh from Yemen are derived from scuds from Russia or North Korean models, and if not shipped in from one of those countries, might have been shipped in from Iran. But KSA has been massively bombing Houthi-controlled portions of Yemen with serious US support for years, with an outcome of mass cholera and famine and thousands dead. None of those pathetic pseudo-scuds has managed to kill or even wound a single person. You really want to make a big fuss about this? Yuck.
No, Assad is not a religious role model. He is a secular Arab nationalist socialist Baathist, who tolerates non-Sunni minorities, some of whom are in his government and pretty much all of whom support him. This includes Christians, Druze, Shia of various sects, including of course the ruling Alawis, the Kurds (Sunni), lots of strictly secular Baathist supporters, Yazidis, and a buch of other more obscure groups. Assad has an awful record, but his most serious opponents are al Qaeda-related entities, whose human rights record in Afghanistan makes Assad look like Nelson Mandela, and those guys were responsible for 9/11 in the US. Do you actually know what you are talking about?
Maybe the gay issue is a big deal for you, but the woman issue is far more important there. I suggest you focus on that. As long as women are getting badly treated, no way gays are going to get well treated.
On the matter of economic unhappiness, this is a serious matter, and there has been recent anti-regime protesting on this. So, prior to the JCPOA when Obama got all the signatories, including even Russia and China, to impose economic sanctions, these bit hard, and in 2011-13, Iran had a serious recession, GDP declining at 2-3% per year. After Rouhani cut the deal after extremely difficult negotiations, and most of the sanctions were taken off (but only some of the US ones), the Iran economy improved, stabilizing at a barely above zero growth rate. Most of that gain came from increased oil exports. The critics are right that most of the gain was squandered in corruption or foreign adventurism.
But, the initial protests came from hardline regions of Iran, opposing the moderate Rouhani for his failure to deliver clear economic benefits. But then the protests spread to other areas and became generally anti-regime. These people have fully reasonable grounds for their protests. The regime is corrupt snd engaging in useless foreign activities of no good for Iranian citizens. But anybody who thinks the regime will fall over this is deluded, as I said previously. If the protest return (curiously they shut down the minute Trump came out in support of them), the outcome will be a takeover by the hardliners. That is the unfortunate bottom line.
All morals are missing in US’ foreign exploits where oil and money are concerned…..
Sidelight: That Houthis get weapons represents a tactical failure of the US war machine executed by the totally inept Saudis. If there were strategy it would fail anyway.
Iran is slightly better than Saudis, the sponsors of 9/11 have no business having the US do to 80 odd million Iranians what it did to Libya, Syria and Iraq.
*US moral light in the world flickered out with Monroe.
Looks like there are ways around US sanctions:
https://sputniknews.com/business/201805191064606128-cnpc-replace-total-iran/
If you go by Sputnik. China has interests in keeping OBOR running and getting more work in the area from the US or EU is likely in their plan.
While other sources say the EU can block effects of US sanctions.
Ilsm,
Companies that have few dealings with the US or its financial system will not get hit by the US sanctions, which is why both Russia and China are set to gain fro all this, with indeed that Chinese company preparing to step in to replace Total, which it looks like will withdraw if not given an exemption from the sanctions. They do not seem to see a way around them.
As it is, the EU’s big weapon, the blocking statute, has its limits. As I think I said already, although I did not name it, what it does is go after European companies that withdraw from Iran to avoid the US sanctions. Thus, the EU hits its own companies. It has never actually been used, although it was threatened to be used in 1996 when Clinton put sanctions on companies that traded with Cuba. He pulled back. But I do not see Trump pulling back in fear of this statute, which does not hurt US companies, it hurts European companies potentially. I think this weapon will have limited effect. Aid from European governments to those companies sanctioned would be more useful than threats to sanction them. This is a weapon that shoots itself in the foot.
Of course in today’s WaPo we have a bunch of analysts in KSA and UAE now complaining about how Trump has no Plan B. They encouraged him to pull out of the deal, but it turns out that they just wanted it amended, not ended. They want limits on Iran building ballistic missiles, and it seems deluded themselves into thinking Trump’s threats would get this amendment. Now they understand what a stupid egomaniac they have been siding with is, especially given his Israeli embassy move in the same week that has triggered the awful events on the Gaza border. Yeah, MbS had fun talking to Jared Kushner, and it was so much fun doing a sword dance with Trump in Riyadh, but now they have face that he really does not know what he is doing other than undoing anything and everything Obama did, even if he has nothing to replace what Obama did with.
Barkley,
Thank you for the information.
I appreciate your insight!
Trump has renewed the dangerous precedent formed by the neocons in control in 2002. Acting on hope, whim, hubris, and despising fact as well as international agreements not just ‘norms’ seems to be a trend with the continuity provided by Bolton and Pompeo.
The image that the US can say something don’t work that the others see working brings up images of yellow cake and WMDs in Iraq.
Tillerson’s commencement speech at VMI was pretty good!
Getting a little concerned about the silence of the ‘press’ over the impending humanitarian disaster in Yemen……… if Iran don’t do it it seems okay!