[BLUF]
[PJ] In hindsight, the success of the Iran nuclear deal implicitly hinged upon the hidden assumption of a third and possibly a fourth Obama term through Hillary Clinton. Her defeat not only exposed the huge costs of the deal but undermined the future payoffs themselves. The eagerness of the Resistance to bring down Donald Trump stems from one single fact. He threatens to ruin their meticulously crafted multi-year plans.
Perhaps it was foolish of Obama to count on four terms to bring his plan to fruition. Maybe Bush's "bringing Democracy to the Middle East" strategy and Obama's "grand bargain with Iran" strategy can't exist in a Washington unable to maintain the multi-decade containment strategy that made victory in the Cold War possible. Foreign policy investments must show a return in one or two presidential terms, or run the risk a new president will reset everything from scratch.
Ironically, Trump's supposed lack of a "grand vision" may accidentally be working in his favor. By focusing on shorter term payoffs he may be aligning his decision cycle closer to the quickening clock of events. He may get up each morning thinking "what shall I do today" -- and that happens to align perfectly with a world in chaos.
Obama's deal suffered ultimately from one great weakness. It was vulnerable to time, the very time which it intended to buy from Tehran with cash and concessions to Hezbollah. Its costs were front-loaded while its benefits were deferred into far misty reaches, the glory so apparently near yet in reality so far. And the first of time's betrayals was the non-election of a president Hillary Clinton.
It was just Obama's bad luck that the sure thing of 2016 never came off so that all the sure things he counted on afterward would come true.