Because Donald Trump backed out of the nuclear deal with Iran, the Iranians have said that they would enrich as much uranium as they want. Now, Trump is saying he’s going to further increase sanctions on them because they won’t abide by a deal that he deliberately backed out of.

Fox News:

President Trump announced Wednesday that he will add to existing sanctions on Iran, after the Islamic republic admitted Monday that it surpassed uranium enrichment levels that were set by the Iran Nuclear Agreement in 2015. The U.S. backed out of that deal, but several European nations remain involved.

The deal said that Iran could not enrich uranium above 3.67 percent, and Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said the country has passed that and may proceed further, Reuters reported. The 3.67 percent level is enough for nuclear power reactors, but far short of the 90 percent needed for weapons.

“Iran has long been secretly ‘enriching,’ in total violation of the terrible 150 Billion Dollar deal made by John Kerry and the Obama Administration. Remember, that deal was to expire in a short number of years,” Trump tweeted. “Sanctions will soon be increased, substantially!”

Iran’s previous announcement that it would boost uranium enrichment above the cap prompted a rebuke from President Trump on Sunday, saying: “Iran better be careful. … Iran is doing a lot of bad things,” Trump said. “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

At this point, I’m not even sure what additional sanctions they can place on Iran. I guess they’ll do something to discourage other countries from doing business with them. The problem is that many European countries, Russia, China and others are not on board with this maximum economic pressure campaign. It’s safe to assume that they’re going to continue doing business with Iran regardless of what the United States does.

The good news is that we aren’t seeing missiles flying back and forth. At least not yet. So this is probably a way for Trump to say he’s doing something against Iran for their rhetoric about uranium enrichment. It’s still a pretty dumb move though. This antagonistic approach against Iran serves no purpose except to benefit Israel and Saudi Arabia. It does not serve American interests in the least.