[Foreign Policy] Decertifying the nuclear deal isn't the most dangerous decision about Iran the president will soon make.President Trump is about to make the most destructive foreign-policy move by a U.S. administration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
It is not simply that Trump reportedly plans this week to decertify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), despite the fact that every other signatory country, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and even Israel’s intelligence agency agree that the deal is being implemented properly by Iran. No, seemingly embarrassed by his inability to just "tear up" the "worst deal ever negotiated," Trump is about to do the thing uberhawks have demanded for years: designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization and putting it on the same level as al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Far more than decertifying the Iran deal, the designation of the IRGC would massively and unnecessarily complicate the fraught U.S. relationship with Iran. The certification requirement was imposed by Congress ‐ it is not a part of the JCPOA, and Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has even acknowledged that it would not necessarily mean U.S. withdrawal from the deal. Designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization, however, would have immediate and potentially disastrous effects that could reverberate across the Middle East. It is, after all, a branch of the armed forces of a U.N.-member nation and one that has shown little hesitancy to strike back at whoever threatens it or the Islamic Republic.
About the Author, Mr. Hooman Majd