Spring of freedom

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster during the U.N. General Assembly in New York The efforts of the foreign-policy establishment to defend the Iran nuclear deal are boosting the case for Trump to change it. The prevailing narrative about the Trump administration’s foreign policy in the mainstream media is that a gallant band of “adults” have spent the last year keeping the barbarians at bay. But with the firings of Rex Tillerson and General H. R. McMaster, the walls have been breached. With Mike Pompeo at the State Department and John Bolton now serving as national-security adviser, there will be no stopping Trump from the one thing the foreign-policy establishment most fears: launching an all out effort to replace or scrap the Iran nuclear deal.   The effort to depict policy debates within the administration as between adults and children was always a not terribly subtle way for the foreign-policy establishment and its che...

.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Britains Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson attend a press conference in London, January 22, 2018  The United States plans to send a diplomatic team to Europe to discuss the Iran nuclear deal and countering Iranian activities in the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Monday according to a U.S. pool reporter.  “We have a team traveling - actually, they’re coming to Europe,” Tillerson said according to the U.S. reporter traveling with him. The team would explore “how we can address these flaws in the nuclear agreement ... but also how can we cooperate more on countering Iran’s activities that are not related to their nuclear program. Our concerns about their arms exports to Yemen and elsewhere,” Tillerson said.