On the Iran Nuclear Deal News

President Trump’s decision to make a finding that the Iran nuclear deal is not in the national interest is profoundly unwise. Even those who opposed it at the outset mostly seem to get that pulling out of it now would be profoundly ill-advised, not least because the President already has one nuclear proliferation crisis on his hands. But what is especially notable here is that he has again essentially punted the question to Congress, much as he did with DACA. He’s been decisive on optics while putting the real decision in the hands of Congress. For some Presidents this might be a principled decision in favor of a non-imperial theory of the presidency. But here it’s some mix of an unwillingness to own his actions and a decision to grab the optics at the expense of or indifferent to the true substance.