The Trump strategy for getting rid of Iran's nukes

Austin Bay:

Indignant media elites and European toffs continue to scorn President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the official name of the “Iran nuclear deal,” but they are once again missing the big news: The Trump administration has launched another “maximum pressure” foreign policy operation, this time targeting the heinous religious dictators and Al Quds terrorists commanding the Iranian regime.

The phrase “maximum pressure” applies to both Team Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal and the administration’s North Korean denuclearization operation. In early 2017, the administration began using the term to describe the combined effect of its coordinated diplomatic, information, military and economic “elements of power” strategy on the Korean peninsula.

On May 9, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders employed the term as a rhetorical weapon when she told the press corps:

We are 100 percent committed to making sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons… We’re going to continue to put maximum pressure, enormous sanctions on them [the Iranian regime]. All of the sanctions that were in place before the deal [i.e., Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] are back in place and we are preparing to add additional sanctions that may come as early as next week.

“Maximum pressure” serves notice. Team Trump intends to eliminate Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. They have declared political and economic war on the ayatollah regime at a moment when it is politically and economically vulnerable—and the ayatollahs know it.
***
June 13, 2009 bedevils the mullahs’ collective memory.

On that day, demonstrators in Tehran braved the secret police and Revolutionary Guards and protested the fraudulent June 12 presidential election. By June 15, election protests had spread throughout Iran.

The election wasn’t the only issue. Many protestors also demanded that the ayatollah dictatorship respect civil liberties.

President Barack Obama was demonstrably slow to support these protests—later known as the Green Movement—and when he provided support, it was cautious and restrained. After all, when he assumed office in January 2009, proposing negotiations with the Iranian dictatorship without any preconditions was one of his foreign policy initiatives.

In 2010, the Iranian regime brutally suppressed the Green Movement.

However, the quiet gripes and grim faces, the bitter jokes about robes and beards and theft, and the internet complaints of food prices—all tell-tale signs of deep dissatisfaction with the regime—never disappeared.

In 2011, Iran increased its support for Shia rebels in Yemen, a Saudi Arabia neighbor. By 2015, Iran and Saudi Arabia were fighting a proxy war in Yemen.

Around the same time, a plunge in oil prices slammed every OPEC nation, and Iran in particular. The Saudis wouldn’t prop up oil’s price because low prices hindered Iran’s war effort.

As a result, in 2015, the ayatollahs faced increasing domestic opposition, corruption and crimped finances.

Then came Obama’s JCPOA. The agreement immediately rewarded the ayatollahs with billions of dollars in cash and sanctions relief. Follow the timeline and it appears the Iranian regime received significant cash before agreeing to retard—not eliminate—its nuclear weapons development program.
...

Having squandered Obama's windfall, Iran's economy is back in trouble and the people are engaged in uprisings against the Mullahs again.  The pressure that the Trump administration is putting on them will only add to the problems of the mullahs.   Iran is once again vulnerable and should not be failed out again.  The Europeans need to stop trying to prop up this despotic regime and get on teh side of the people.