The Power of a Time Lag

Fact check: this guy is a propagandist.

❌Fact Check: False.

When Biden and Harris took office, Iran was months from a nuclear weapon. Now they’re a week away. Iran went from 5% enrichment in 2020 to 60% enrichment under Biden/Harris with no consequences.

Iran is now meddling is our elections in favor of Harris. pic.twitter.com/ET3eKaQnwd

— Morgan Ortagus (@MorganOrtagus) August 24, 2024

In 2018, President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran. Tom Collina, a political strategist, national security expert, and co-author of "The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump," wrote in May

To fully understand the enormity of Trump’s decision to leave the Iran deal, consider this: When the U.S. and Iran were complying with the deal, it was estimated that it would take Iran about one year to produce enough fissile material (in this case, weapons grade uranium) for a nuclear bomb (known as the “breakout” time). The states negotiating with Iran (the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and Germany) assessed that this would be enough time to respond to possible violations and prevent Iran from producing a bomb. Even if Iran were to acquire sufficient fissile material, it could still take another year for Iran to make a deliverable nuclear weapon. As of May, 2018, the deal was working and considered (by most) to be a great success.

Then President Trump unilaterally left the deal, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” And now we are in a much worse place. Iran says it has no intent to produce nuclear weapons and U.S. intelligence sees no current efforts by Tehran to weaponize, yet Tehran is believed to be not one year but just weeks from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb if it chooses to do so.

At the same time, the ability of international inspectors to detect violations in a timely manner has eroded. As one U.S. official said of Iran, “they are dancing right up to the edge." 

Most Republicans incorrectly claim that the high inflation, now subsided, of the past few years resulted from President Biden's spending. Rather, as Fed chairperson Jay Powell noted, "pandemic-related distortions to supply and demand, as well as severe shocks to energy and commodity markets, wee important drivers of high inflation, and their reversal has been a key part of the story of its decline."

The situation is analogous to the growing threat from Tehran. President Trump's decision to withdraw from the treaty with Iran did not immediately precipitate a crisis with Iran. However, Tehran, unbound from its constraints, resumed its uranium enrichment program.  So as Collina explained, now

we are in a much worse place. Iran says it has no intent to produce nuclear weapons and U.S. intelligence sees no current efforts by Tehran to weaponize, yet Tehran is believed to be not one year but just weeks from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb if it chooses to do so.

Iran is a very bad actor and has played a major role in making the Middle East a very dangerous place. We can thank Donald Trump for helping making it so.

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