Quote · The Rest Is Politics: US
196. Trump’s Iran Deal: One Big American Failure?
Where this was said
Nuclear Proliferation: The World's Scariest Lesson
At 12:52 · chapter starts 12:40
The conversation moves from the bilateral Iran deal to the global repercussions. Katty Kay's most alarming argument is structural: the lesson that America has just taught the world is that nuclear weapons provide absolute protection from US military strikes. North Korea has nukes and was left alone; Iran didn't and was bombed [1] — Katty Kay "America bombed Iran but left nuclear-armed North Korea untouched. Every country watching — South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia — just learned …" 10:20 . For any government in Seoul, Tokyo, Riyadh, or Abu Dhabi that previously relied on the American security umbrella, the calculus has shifted — why trust an ally that may not stand by you, when the North Korean model offers ironclad protection? Scaramucci concurs and adds that the Israelis sold Trump on a swift, decisive war and he believed them, setting both nations up for a strategic setback that historians will scrutinise for decades. It's not the Suez Crisis, Scaramucci hedges — but it's genuinely bad.
Iran has been observing American patterns in the Middle East for 25 years and used that knowledge to draw Trump into an unwinnable war. Historians, Scaramucci predicts, will write that this was a major US miscalculation — not a Suez-level disaster, but a serious strategic wound.
Trump set 6 stated goals for the Iran operation; by Katty Kay's count, only a couple were substantially achieved.
Trump announced six goals for the Iran operation: destroy the missiles, destroy the proxies, achieve regime change, annihilate the navy, raze the missile industry, and stop nuclear weapons. By Katty Kay's count, only roughly two were substantially achieved.
