Welcome to Renege Nation, people. Everything having to do with the United States government, up to and including its word among nations, now functions on the basic principle that has animated the president*’s entire business career–“Yeah? So, sue me.” So he went on TV with his Serious World Leader face screwed on tightly, and he told the world that the good faith of the United States is now worth as much as a degree from his phony university.

You all know that he had no fcking clue what he was talking about, right? If he’s read the text of the agreement with Iran past the first comma, I am Xerxes of Persia. The whole speech was abject gibberish; it was framed as though Iran already has nuclear weapons, which they bought with the bags of cash that Barack Obama personally delivered to Tehran. He was handed some truthless lunacy from some crackpot like John Bolton, and he read it on television. And, just like that, the credibility of the United States sank to the bottom of a sinkhole golf course in Florida.

The good faith of the United States is now worth as much as a degree from Trump phony university.

Most of our primary allies are free to go their own way with Iran, the president* having just dragged their credibility down, too. For its part, if this deal falls apart, Iran could go right ahead with a nuclear-weapons program and the only solution would be some sort of catastrophic military action, which far too many people in and out of this administration want. To name only one, Bibi Netanyahu found a prime mark for the ludicrous seventh-grade social-studies project he delivered last week. The Saudis took a break from slaughtering people in Yemen to praise the president*, which I’m sure warmed his orb for him. And, finally, if we haven’t mentioned it, the president* had no fcking clue what he was talking about.

In theory, the so-called Iran deal was supposed to protect the United States and our allies from the lunacy of an Iranian nuclear bomb that would only ensure the survival of the Iranian regime. In fact the—and over time reach the brink of a nuclear breakout. The deal lifted crippling economic sanctions, on Iran, in exchange for very weak limits on the regime’s nuclear activity and no limits at all on its other malign behavior, including its sinister activities in Syria, Yemen, and other places all around the world. In other words, at the point when the United States had maximum leverage, this disastrous deal gave this regime, and it’s a regime of great terror, many billions of dollars, some of it in actual cash, a great embarrassment to me as a citizen, and to all citizens of the United States. A constructive deal could have easily been struck at the time. But it wasn’t.

We are unified in our understanding of the threat and our conviction that Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon. After these consultations, it is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement. The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen. In just a short period of time, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.

At least he didn’t say he didn’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. Man, I hated 2002 the first time around.

But the deeply hopeless part of the speech came at the end, when the president* assured the Iranian people that, while we may have to blow some of them up, we’re really on their side.

The people of America stand with you. It has now been almost 40 years since this dictatorship seized power and took a proud nation hostage. Most of Iran’s 80 million citizens have sadly never known an Iran that prospered in peace with its neighbors and commanded the admiration of the world. But the future of Iran belongs to its people. They are the rightful heirs to a rich culture and an ancient land, and they deserve a nation that does justice to their dreams, honor to their history, and glory to god.

Has any country ever bollocked its relationship with another nation more than the United States has with Iran? In 1946, immediately after World War II, the United States backed the shah’s army for the purposes of running Soviet troops out of the country. (This ended up with Kurdish separatists hung in a public square.) Seven years later, the United States and Great Britain, acting on a request from their respective oil interests, organized a coup that threw out a democratically elected prime minister named Mohammad Mossadeq. We then installed the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi who, by the end of his reign, was torturing dissidents and generally cracking down until the people rose up and overthrew him, which led to the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini and, ultimately, to the Iran hostage crisis.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Vice President Mike Pence listen to President Donald Trump announce his decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Getty Images

The “dictatorship” mentioned by the president* merely replaced the dictatorship we installed and sponsored after our oil interests decided the Iranians couldn’t be trusted to govern themselves. If you can find one thing the United States has done in this whole mess that was to the thoroughgoing good of the Iranian people, you’re smarter than I am.

And, even if there were a strong faction in Iran to toss out the mullahs and return to a secular government, the president* now has made certain that those people will have no serious political salience at all. They, and the politicians they support, will be cast by the hardcore religious parties as only the latest suckers fooled by the Great Satan. And, from their point of view, it’s hard to argue that the criticism isn’t true.

When I make promises, I keep them.



That’s the funniest damn thing he’s ever said. All over New Jersey, subcontractors are doubled over with laughter. Of course, it’s a statement that no longer applies to the United States, now d/b/a Renege Nation.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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