28 Mar 2024
Lobe Log | Eli Clifton: President Donald Trump has just fulfilled a campaign pledge to tear up the Obama administrations signature foreign policy achievement, a multilateral agreement constraining Irans nuclear enrichment (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA). In doing so, the president went againstthe advice of, among many others, his secretary of defense, House Foreign Affairs Committee ChairmanEd Royce (R-CA), Washingtons three most important European allies, and almost-two thirds of Americans who believe that the U.S. should not withdraw from the deal, according toa CNN pollreleased on Tuesday morning.

Trump appears absolutely determined to undo as much of what Barack Obama accomplished as possible. In addition, the sheer perversity of his personality may well explain todays action. But it may also be useful to follow the apochryphal advice that Watergates famous Deep Throat offered to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein inAll the Presidents Men, particularly in the unbelievably corrupt swamp of the Trump era.

Indeed, todays unpopular announcement may have been exactly what two of Trumps biggest donors,Sheldon AdelsonandBernard Marcus, and what one of his biggest inaugural supporters,Paul Singer, paid for when they threw their financial weight behind Trump. Marcus and Adelson, who are also board members of the LikudistRepublican Jewish Coalition, have already received substantial returns on their investment: total alignment by the U.S. behind Israel, next weeks move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and the official dropping of occupied territories to describe the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Adelson, for his part, was Trump and the GOPs biggest campaign supporter. He and his wife Miriam contributed $35 million in outside spending to elect Trump, $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund (a super PAC exclusively dedicated to securing a GOP majority in the House of Representatives), and $35 million to the Senate Leadership Fund (the Senate counterpart) in the 2016 election cycle.

Trump, who had previously complained that Adelson was seeking to mold [Marco Rubio] into the perfect little puppet, quicklysnapped aroundand echoed Adelsons hawkish positions on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem after Trump won the Republican nomination and secured Adelsons backing.

Politicoreportedthat the most threatening line in Trumps October UN speechthat he would cancel Washingtons participation in the JCPOA if Congress and U.S. allies did not bend to his efforts to renegotiate itcame directly fromJohn Bolton, now Trumps national security advisor, and with the full weight of Trumps biggest donor. The hawkish language was not in the original remarks prepared by Trumps staff.
The line was added to Trumps speech after Bolton, despite Kellys recent edict [restricting Boltons access to Trump], reached the president by phone on Thursday afternoon from Las Vegas, where Bolton was visiting with Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson. Bolton urged Trump to include a line in his remarks noting that he reserved the right to scrap the agreement entirely, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.
Adelson, for his part, hasadvocated launching a nuclear weaponagainst Iran as a negotiating tactic and threatening to nuke Tehran, a city with a population of 8.8 million, if Iran does not completely abandon its nuclear program.

Newt Gingrich, a huge recipient of Adelsons financial largesse during his failed 2012 presidential campaign,said thatAdelsons central value is Israel.

And Adelson isnt alone in holding radical views about Iran and having the ear of the president, or at least significant financial leverage.

Home Depot cofounder Bernard Marcus, Trumps second largest campaign contributor,contributed $7 millionto pro-Trump Super PACs, $500,000 to the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), and $2 million the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF).

In a 2015 Fox Business interview, Marcus compared the JCPOA to do[ing] business with the devil. He went on to clarify, I think Iran is the devil.

Adelson and Marcus also share a common affinity for the hawkishFoundation for Defense of Democracies(FDDsReuel Marc Gerechtmay have set a record by publishing no less than three anti-JCPOA columns forThe Atlanticin the past week.) Adelson contributed at least $1.5 million to the group by the end of 2011 (a year that saw a sharp rise in tensions and rumors of war by Israel against Iran) according to FDDs 2011Schedule A tax disclosure, and Marcus, the groups biggest donor, contributed at least $10.7 million.

FDD says Adelson is no longer a contributor, but Marcus continues to give generously, contributing $3.25 million in 2015, the last year for which his foundations grants are known.

Hedge Fund billionaire Paul Singer contributed at least $3.6 million to FDD by the end of 2011, making him the groups second biggest donor after Marcus at the time.

Employees of Singers firm, Elliott Management, were the second largest source of funds supporting the 2014 candidacy of the Senates most outspoken Iran hawk,Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)and Singer contributed $1.9 million to the CLF and $6 million to the SLF. He was a holdout in supporting Trumps candidacy and financed the initial research by Fusion GPS that turned into the Steele Dossier detailing alleged ties between Trumps campaign and businesses with Moscow. But he came around before Trumps inauguration and contributed $1 million to the festivities.

Between them, the three billionaires account for over $40 million in pro-Trump political money. In the 2016 cycle, the three were also the source of 44% of individual contributions to the CLF and 47% of those received by the SLF, the biggest spending campaign finance vehicles for House and Senate Republicans.

Trump and the GOP are deeply indebted to anti-Iran deal billionaires who arent afraid to advocate for policies that push the country closer to another war in the Middle East.

Trumps decision to back out of the JCPOA might come across as a renegade president bucking conventional wisdom and following through on a poorly thought-out campaign promise to undo the work of his predecessor.

But another explanation is that Trump and the Republican Party are effectively captive to a small cohort of hawkish billionaires dead set on steering the country away from any sort of detente with Iran, even a multilateral agreement that ensures limits on enrichment and subjects the Islamic Republic to invasive inspections of its nuclear facilities.

Both explanations may be true.

 
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