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2 Jan, 12 tweets, 5 min read
Iran's nuke program is more advanced than 4 years ago. Trump let Iran out of nuclear restrictions for no good reason, and damaged the Western alliance in the process.
Iran is also more powerful in the region, not less.
Utter failure, foreseen by many whose warnings were ignored.
With the Trump administration on the way out, here's a look back at what I wrote about their Iran strategy. When I say the failure of that strategy was easy to foresee, I mean I called it from the beginning (as did others).
Jan 6, before Trump took office.
arcdigital.media/trump-vs-iran-…
June 5, 2017: The Saudis and some Israelis want the US to go hard against Iran "in the vain hope Iran will capitulate," but capitulation won't happen so throwing away gains in pursuit of it would be a mistake.
arcdigital.media/trump-forfeits…
July 20, 2017: Trump botched the Qatar crisis.
"Trump sees the situation as good guys (Saudis) vs. bad guys (Iran). But — and I can’t believe I have to write this — the Middle East is complicated."
The result: Qatar closer to Iran, Iran stronger in region.
medium.com/rantt/its-hard…
Oct 5, 2017: The "Madman Theory" won't work on Iran
arcdigital.media/withdrawing-fr…
Oct 8, '17: Scrapping the Iran deal will hurt the Western alliance
arcdigital.media/scrapping-the-…
Oct 14, '17: Trump's speech scrapping JCPOA misguidedly ignores Iran's domestic politics
arcdigital.media/the-big-hole-i…
March 18, 2018: Trump's Iran strategy is failing and that failure will become progressively more obvious, which means he'll come under increasing pressure to Do Something.
(Thankfully US v. Iran military confrontation has remained fairly limited)
arcdigital.media/donald-trump-i…
May 8, 2018: The US withdrew from the Iran Deal, but it has no idea how to get a "better deal" because, unlike in 2015, Iran isn't under multilateral pressure. Even if you think Obama was wrong, we can't go back in time and recreate pre-deal conditions.
arcdigital.media/iran-deal-oppo…
Sept 27, 2018: The US scrapping JCPOA without cause, besides letting Iran out of restrictions, is aligning JCPOA proponents against the US.
Bush and Obama built an anti-Iran coalition. Trump flipped that into sympathy for Iran and anger at the US.
arcdigital.media/trump-united-t…
June 19, 2019: To really pressure Iran takes an international coalition. The Trump admin acts like other countries should line up behind the US, and even though they agree on some anti-Iran goals, no one will join because none trust Trump's leadership.
arcdigital.media/crisis-of-trus…
Jan 2, 2020: The (non-deadly) attack on the US embassy in Baghdad is very different from the 2012 deadly attack on a US diplomatic facility in Benghazi, and forcing the Baghdad attack into the partisan frame of "Benghazi" is a mistake.
arcdigital.media/baghdad-is-not…
Jan 4, 2020: US killing Iranian general Qassem Soleimani won't lead to outright war, but will likely lead to Iran gaining more political influence in Iraq at America's expense.
(Looking at it a year later, that's exactly what happened).
arcdigital.media/u-s-killing-so…
After Jan 2020, I focused on COVID and the election, and didn't write a full article on US-Iran (though I tweeted about it a bunch).
Looking back, I nailed it every step of the way. So did others.
This failure was easy to see coming. Trump was warned. He did it anyway.
(END)

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More from @NGrossman81

Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
1 Jan
Janet Yellen is one of the most impressive, most accomplished people in the world. She played a major role in preventing the global financial crisis from turning into a second Great Depression, heading off a lot of suffering. People pay her to speak at conferences. This is fine.
Big speaking fees are corporations/conferences trying to buy clout, not secret agreements for speakers to provide a favor in the future.
For speakers it's: "All I have to do is show up, say some words of my own choosing, and you hand me a giant check? OK."
How corporations think: "We got Yellen! That's a Big Name. She ran the Fed! People will think we're important."
How they don't: "We got Yellen! Now she owes us. We'll ask for a favor and, despite having proved she can make money easily, she'll be so in thrall to us she'll do it."
Read 7 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
31 Dec 20
"Shutdown" = Restaurants/bars takeout only 10:30pm-6am. Seriously, that's it. Open any hours they want, dine-in allowed most of the day.
COVID discourse is warped by GOP officials lying to the public, falsely calling minor restrictions "shutting down businesses" to stoke outrage.
Most use "lockdown" or "shutdown" to mean closing everything & telling everyone to stay home. But some politicized commentary uses those terms for minor restrictions with everything still open.
It confuses people, unnecessarily stokes anger, and likely increases virus spread too.
-You've been in lockdown all year?
-Yes
-Insane. Stay home a few weeks maybe, but all year is way too much.
-We don't have to stay at home
-Oh. Well, sorry your business is closed.
-It's open
-So...?
-Late night is take out only
-The worst affront to civil liberties since slavery
Read 4 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
15 Dec 20
Was GW Bush more fascist than Trump?
This good @michelleinbklyn column highlighted for me why I'm not the left.
Because not only do I disagree with those who say Bush was worse than Trump, I don't think "who was more fascist?" is a useful question.
1/x
 nytimes.com/2020/12/14/opi…
Much of left discourse fixates on fascism. Some use "fascism" to mean any right-wing govt, anything bad about govt, or sometimes just "bad thing."
But even those who are more precise fixate on it, which leads them to search for parallels to historical cases and fascist theory
2/x
Instead of asking questions like "closer or farther from a free society?" or "how strong are these institutions?," the fixation on fascism leads to "how much does this resemble 1920s-30s Italy or Germany?" and "how close is this to that scholar's description of fascism?"
3/x
Read 9 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
6 Dec 20
Republicans Meet the Modern GOP
A running thread of Republicans/conservatives expressing surprise & dismay that so many seem to actually believe election conspiracy theories as if distorting reality hasn't been central to the GOP for years.
If you spot good examples, let me know.
First, an incomplete list of false conspiracy theories pushed by prominent GOP officials and right-wing media figures in recent years
-Birtherism
-Pizzagate
-Colleges indoctrinate students into socialism
-Seth Rich
-QAnon
-Ukraine was really behind 2016 interference
-Hunter Biden
Ross Douthat, in a solid column exploring different types of paths to—and levels of—belief in conspiracy theories, showing he was at least somewhat in denial about the Trump-era GOP.
Yes, many average GOP voters really believe. They weren't just saying it.
nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opi… Image
Read 5 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
26 Nov 20
Many misunderstand the Flynn case because they don’t know the difference between counterintelligence and law enforcement.
Flynn was in big counterintel trouble, and got to plead guilty to a small criminal charge because he gave info to help FBI/Mueller counterintel investigation.
Michael Flynn’s defenders and apologists, from Glenn Greenwald to QAnon, elide the counterintelligence-law enforcement distinction, acting as if the only thing Flynn did wrong was lie to the FBI.
But the lying charge—which he pled guilty to multiple times—was the sweetheart deal.
To everyone asking if Flynn broke a deal by withdrawing his guilty plea and can now be charged for other things, I think that also confuses counterintel and law enforcement.
Info from Flynn is in the Mueller report. He gave something of value, so his CI deal is likely intact.
Read 9 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
24 Nov 20
Rubio spent four years excusing, defending, apologizing for, and protecting the biggest cause of America's global decline.
Relative decline for a unipolar power is inevitable. But it didn't have to be this fast, with US stupidly throwing away so much influence, from TPP to COVID.
Trump, Kushner, Pompeo, Esper, Barr, Mnuchin and other top admin officials went to Ivy League schools.
Clearly, where top officials went to school is not a good predictor of how they'll perform in office.
Rubio knows this. He just thinks faux populism will appeal to his audience.
US had TPP, the world's largest trading bloc, including a variety of Pacific Rim countries but excluding China. A great geopolitical move.
Trump bailed for no good reason, failed to get bilateral trade deals, and now there's a new world's largest trading bloc with China but no US
Read 7 tweets

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