In the November 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, the Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana Governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticket of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senator from Virginia Tim Kaine. Trump took office as the 45th president, and Pence as the 48th vice president, on January 20, 2017.
When they ended the era of Barack Obama, the American people showed themselves to be rising up against everything he and his elitist backers stood for, and they chose a president who was different from nearly every other one in history. Barack Obama had an academic and political background, but Donald Trump, on the other hand, was only known as a successful businessman and TV star. Americans who were suffering from economic collapse and the effects of a weak foreign policy couldn’t bear this situation any longer, and they wanted an entirely different way of thinking in the oval office. Consequently, they revolted against all previous perceptions and assumptions, and called upon an outsider to save them.
When he was inaugurated, former president Bill Clinton took his oath of office while putting his hand on a King James Bible given to him by his grandmother, and the Bible was opened to Galatians 6:9. Obama, however, took his oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible, symbolically showing that he wanted to follow in Lincoln’s footsteps. Donald Trump put his hand on two Bibles, the one used by Abraham Lincoln in 1861, and the other one was Ronald Reagan’s.
Ronald Wilson Reagan served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Before Regan was inaugurated, during Jimmy Carter’s last year in office (1980), America’s inflation rate averaged 12.5%, compared with 4.4% during Reagan’s last year in office (1988). During Reagan’s administration, the unemployment rate declined from 7.5% to 5.4%, with the rate reaching highs of 10.8% in 1982 and 10.4% in 1983, averaging 7.5% over the eight years, and real GDP growth averaged 3.4% with a high of 8.6% in 1983, while nominal GDP growth averaged 7.4%, and peaked at 12.2% in 1982. Reagan implemented policies based on supply-side economics, advocated a laissez-faire philosophy and free-market fiscal policy, seeking to stimulate the economy with significant, across-the-board tax cuts. He also supported returning the United States to some form of the gold standard.
Reagan escalated the Cold War, accelerating a reversal from the policy of detente that had been pursued by the Carter Administration. In the aftermath of the Afghan Saur Revolution and subsequent Soviet invasion, Reagan ordered a massive buildup of the United States Armed Forces and implemented new policies directed against the Soviet Union; he revived the B-1 Lancer program that had been canceled by the Carter administration, and he produced the MX missile. In response to the Soviet deployment of the SS-20, Reagan oversaw NATO‘s implementation of the Pershing missile in West Germany. In 1982, Reagan tried to cut off Moscow’s access to hard currency by impeding its proposed gas line to Western Europe, which hurt the Soviet economy. Under a policy that came to be known as the Reagan Doctrine, Reagan and his administration also provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist resistance movements with the aim of rolling back Soviet-backed communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Reagan deployed the CIA’s Special Activities Division to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they were instrumental in training, equipping and leading the Mujahideen forces against the Soviet Army. Perhaps most importantly, President Reagan ended the Cold War. In November 1989, East German authorities began allowing citizens to pass freely through border checkpoints and began dismantling the Wall. By the following June, Germany was reunited.
President Donald Trump, by choosing Reagan as a role model, has shown that he is a realistic person because, in both his perspective and that of many others, right now, the world situation is very much akin to the one President Reagan faced. The Russians are trying to resurrect the Soviet empire and are extending their shadow all over the Middle East to restore their economy, China is ganging up on the USA, despite its deep economic investments in America, and is even trying to exclude it from the global balance of power. And of course, Europe, as in Reagan’s era, is split into two, between globalists and nationalists. President Donald Trump knows that we are living in Reagan’s age, and so he is trying to follow in the Gipper’s footsteps.
Economic assessment
According to the White House report on President Donald Trump Administration Accomplishments, almost 4 million jobs have been created since Trump’s election, more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs created, manufacturing jobs are growing at the fastest rate in more than three decades, and women’s unemployment has reached the lowest rate in 65 years. The Trump administration has signed the most significant package of tax cuts in history, pouring over $300 billion back into the U.S. private sector, and small businesses have the lowest top marginal tax rate in more than 80 years. Amazingly, the economic growth rate has hit 4.2 percent.
Foreign policy
President Trump, just like Reagan who used to praise Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, while putting pressure on him, praises Vladimir Putin while putting pressure on him as well. Trump is trying to tame China with tariffs, reforming NATO and making the alliance stronger, by, most importantly, bringing Europeans back to the level of equal partners.
Trump and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the JCPOA, or more commonly, the Iran nuclear deal or Iran deal, is an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program reached in Vienna on July 14, 2015, between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany together with the European Union. The JCPOA was built on the hope of stopping the Islamic Republic of Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. The West believed that by giving the Mullahs of Tehran some cash and bringing them into the global market, they could eventually transform the Islamic Regime into a responsible actor. The West thought that with this agreement, they were hitting two birds with one stone, no atomic Islamic Republic, and establishing a tame ruling elite in Tehran of wealthy Mullahs whose sons play piano and their daughters’ dance ballet. In reality, however, the Islamic Republic took the money and squandered it on extending its power in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Gaza. Despite having the gates of the modern world open to them, the Mullahs decided to equip terrorist groups with more sophisticated weapons and went rogue. Therefore, on October 13, 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would terminate its commitment to the JCPOA. And again, the Berlin Wall fell down. On the west side of today’s Wall are the Europeans who want to preserve U.S. trade with the E.U., which totaled nearly $1.3 trillion in 2018, and on the eastern side of the Wall are the who are trying to keep their commitment to the JCPOA.
President Donald Trump Has Found the Holy Grail
The Christians believe that St. Mary Magdalene collected Christ’s blood in a sacred vessel after the Crucifixion, called the Holy Grail. In this version of the story, the Grail is not the cup of the Last Supper, but an oil or ointment container that St. Mary Magdalene had used to prepared Jesus Christ for his crucifixion by anointing him with spikenard, aromatic oil or balm. The vessel she is said to have used to collect Christ’s blood was the jar that had contained this oil. It has been said that whoever drinks from this chalice would have all of their illnesses healed. President Donald Trump has found the Holy Grail of today’s international politics, and it is called the ‘Maximum Pressure Campaign’ on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Europeans are trying to hold on to the JCPOA for three reasons. First, they don’t want to have an Islamic Republic with an atomic bomb, which they think can be prevented by the inspection procedures mentioned in the JCPOA. To think that it could stop the Mullahs is unbearably naïve, however. Because of the documents extracted from Iran by Israel’s Mossad, we now have proof that the Mullahs have secret facilities and activities that the watchdogs of the IAEA never got their hands on.
Second, the Europeans are afraid of a war, because a new war in the Middle East would threaten their interests and their oil imports from the Persian Gulf. They also believe that if any battles begin in Iran, the Mullahs would go beg for aid from Russian president Putin, which would give the Russians a better bargaining position vis a vis the Europeans, who are already suffering due to their dependence on Russian gas imports.
Third, the Europeans believe that driving the Tehran Mullahs out of power would plunge Iran into a civil war, create another Syria, and would result in a mass migration of Iranians seeking asylum in Europe, a situation that would hit like thunder and not disappear like smoke. Europeans are trying to avoid that because, obviously, they are not able to bear another refugee crisis.
That is where President Donald Trump’s Holy Grail can save them. The ‘Maximum Pressure Campaign’, firstly, is building international unity against Tehran’s terrorism, and secondly, is destroying the Mullahs’ sources of wealth. The Russians would not risk a war against an international coalition, so they will not help the Mullahs if they become imperiled. China is struggling with tariffs, and they will not destroy their economy by risking their trade with the U.S. for the sake of Iran.
On the other hand, the ‘Maximum Pressure Campaign’ has weakened the Mullahs enough so that if any war is triggered, it won’t be a long war, and the Mullahs would be quickly thrown to the ash heap of history. In their fear of an Iranian civil war and mass migration, the Westerners have forgotten that Iranians already had a democratic constitutional revolution in 1906, and have been struggling for the rule of law and freedom since. Over the last four decades, Iranians have realized that by believing in what their ancestors believed, they could ‘Make Iran Great Again’. Chaos will not succeed the Islamic Regime, the fall of the Mullahs, thanks to the ‘Maximum Pressure Campaign’, will see the flowering of a secular Iranian democracy in its stead.
Kaveh Taheri is an Iranian journalist and sociopolitical researcher based in Turkey.
