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For Immediate Release
May, 08 2018, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Gabe Murphy, Peace Action, 510-501-3345 cell, gmurphy@peaceaction.org
Jon Rainwater, Peace Action, 510-469-3700 cell, jrainwater@peaceaction.org
Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action, 951-217-7285 cell, pmartin@peace-action.org
Trump's Cheating on Iran Deal Moves U.S. Closer to a New War of Choice
President Trump announced today that he will not waive sanctions on Iran ahead of a May 12 deadline to waive sanctions that were lifted under the Iran nuclear agreement.
WASHINGTON
President Trump announced today that he will not waive sanctions on Iran ahead of a May 12 deadline to waive sanctions that were lifted under the Iran nuclear agreement. Failing to waive sanctions on or before May 12 will amount to a material breach of the Iran nuclear agreement on two levels, first by re-imposing sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the agreement, and second, by interfering with Iran's full realization of sanctions relief.
In response to Trump's announcement, Jon Rainwater, Executive Director of Peace Action, lambasted the president. "Trump's short-sighted, politically motivated abdication of U.S. commitments under the Iran agreement is cause for alarm. Iran has warned that it may withdraw from the agreement if Trump's actions deprive it of economic benefits it was promised under the deal, so this move could spell doom for the successful nuclear pact, and with it all of the restrictions and checks on Iran's nuclear program."
Since taking office, Trump has heard from countless national security and nuclear policy experts that the agreement is working and is in the best interests of the United States. The IAEA, the European Union, over 80 nuclear policy experts, the State Department, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis have all said Iran is adhering to the terms of the agreement. But Trump's close relationships with fierce opponents of the Iran agreement and advocates for war with Iran appear to be counteracting the experts. Trump's new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo supported bombing Iran over negotiations. Trump's new national security advisor John Bolton suggested regime change in Iran could be accomplished by the end of 2018. Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Saturday that Trump himself is "committed to regime change" in Iran.
As Rainwater put it, "Ignoring facts and expert opinions has never been a challenge for this president, so we shouldn't be surprised that he's done it again, even in the face of a global campaign to encourage him to stand by the deal. What's particularly terrifying is that beyond inviting the collapse of the historic Iran agreement and all the benefits it provides, Trump has surrounded himself with advocates for regime change in Iran. Playing to his base and spiting his predecessor may be the key motivations for Trump, but his new war cabinet is likely more focused on provoking a response from Iran that it could use as a pretext for war."
Speaking to Congress' role in responding to Trump's decision, Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action's Senior Director for Policy and Political Affairs, argued that "lawmakers should oppose this reckless crisis of choice with Iran, waive the sanctions themselves and show that America keeps it word. Recent polling shows that a majority of Americans support the Iran agreement, as they understand it makes the U.S. safer and cheating on agreements will make it more difficult to negotiate with other countries including the critical negotiations with North Korea."
Addressing the longer-term threat of war with Iran, Martin urged Congress to reassert its war powers. "Whatever Trump's war cabinet may be planning for Iran--and they may well be planning forcible regime change--Trump cannot launch a war against Iran without congressional approval. Given Trump's abuse of his war powers in Syria, Yemen and perhaps elsewhere, Congress needs to remind him of that."
Peace Action is the United States' largest peace and disarmament organization with over 100,000 members and nearly 100 chapters in 34 states, works to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs and encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights.
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100+ Economists, Scholars Demand End to Sanctions on Venezuela After Catastrophic Earthquakes
The experts laid out various policies they argued are "required to prevent avoidable deaths, stabilize a sanctioned economy, and allow Venezuelans to rebuild with dignity."
Jul 07, 2026
With at least 3,535 people dead, 16,740 injured, and tens of thousands still missing after a pair of major earthquakes hit Venezuela last month, over 100 economists and scholars on Tuesday jointly called for "immediate action to unfetter Venezuela's humanitarian response and reconstruction from ongoing economic and financial sanctions, asset freezes, and onerous debt burdens."
Such demands began to emerge shortly after the 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes, both centered in Yaracuy, on June 24. The new letter, shared with Common Dreams by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, follows a similar message sent to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week by CEPR, Just Foreign Policy, Latin America Working Group, Venezuelan American Community Action, Peace Action, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and a dozen other organizations.
The academics and economists, including several experts at CEPR as well as James Galbraith, Jayati Ghosh, Jason Hickel, Ann Pettifor, Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Wade, and Isabella Weber, highlighted that "Venezuela enters this disaster after years of unilateral coercive measures, financial sanctions, and export controls that have damaged its economy and infrastructure."
That includes decades of US sanctions. On top of those economic moves, Trump earlier this year sent troops into Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro, then took control of the South American country's nationalized oil industry. The New York Times reported earlier this week that the Trump administration has seized at least $8 billion worth of Venezuela's oil wealth this year.
In a Tuesday piece for Just Security, a pair of experts who signed the new letter—George Lopez, professor emeritus of peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, and Venezuelan economist and CEPR senior Research Fellow Francisco Rodríguez—noted that post-earthquakes, "the United States pledged $300 million to relief agencies, mobilized civilian and military teams to Venezuela that are trained on disaster relief, and issued a limited sanctions waiver for earthquake relief activities.
"But these measures are far from enough," they stressed, explaining that "the United Nations estimates the losses from the quakes stand at $37 billion," or 32% of Venezuela's gross domestic product. They suggested that "the United States should spearhead a major reconstruction effort and lift all remaining sanctions on the Venezuelan economy."
The US was eager to take control in Venezuela earlier this year.Now that the country is facing devastating loss after twin earthquakes, the US should spearhead a major reconstruction effort and lift all remaining sanctions.From Francisco Rodríguez and George A. Lopez:
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— Just Security (@justsecurity.org) July 7, 2026 at 9:06 AM
The broader group argued that "whatever one's position on Venezuela's internal politics, the current set of coercive economic measures directed at the country is an indiscriminate instrument. Sanctions on the central bank, public banking, oil industry, and debt transactions do not land surgically on officials; they incapacitate payment systems, raise import costs, block correspondent banking, freeze reserves, deter suppliers, and produce scarcity across an entire society. This is precisely the moment to remove any economic and financial obstacles to relief and reconstruction."
They called on the Trump administration specifically to lift all economic sanctions, "including any that may impact the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV), government institutions, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), public financial institutions, the oil and mining sectors, banking, transportation, shipping, telecommunications, travel, and all related activities," and to immediately issue "the Section 25B certification that is required to enable the BCV to receive, control, use, and transact through its accounts and assets at the Federal Reserve and US banks."
The experts also took aim at the United Kingdom and the Portuguese, calling on the governments to respectively work with "the Bank of England to ensure the immediate unfreezing of the BCV's gold reserves, worth about $5 billion and representing a third of the central bank's reported assets," as well as with Novo Banco, "to return $1.2 billion belonging to Venezuela's development bank, BANDES, and PDVSA affiliates, as set out in a 2023 court decision."
They further pressured the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to "ensure that Venezuela has full access to its approximately $5 billion in special drawing rights (SDRs) for emergency stabilization and imports," and to approve a $4 billion rapid financing instrument (RFI) disbursement immediately, using its emergency and natural disaster rationale, with no conditions."
Beyond those specific recommendations, the economists and scholars urged "a coordinated debt jubilee for Venezuela," writing that "all official bilateral creditors, multilateral creditors to the extent legally possible, and public agencies holding claims should cancel or suspend debt service, interest, penalties, and arrears, and pursue a comprehensive debt reduction consistent with a rights-based recovery and climate-resilient reconstruction."
"A new fund should be established—perhaps financed by the IMF's Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST)—to repurchase distressed debt from the secondary market, with legal protections against holdout litigation and asset seizures," they proposed. "Money owed to creditors cannot at the same time rebuild hospitals, schools, housing, water systems, and the grid. A debt crisis in these conditions is a developmental and humanitarian crisis."
"Venezuela's people must not be made to pay twice: first through disaster, and then through sanctions, frozen reserves, and unsustainable debt servicing," they concluded. "We urge governments, international financial institutions, and creditors to act now, on the principle that lives, public health, and economic recovery take precedence over coercion and collection. Emergency liquidity, full sanctions relief, SDR access, RFI financing, and debt cancellation are not acts of charity. They are the minimum policy response required to prevent avoidable deaths, stabilize a sanctioned economy, and allow Venezuelans to rebuild with dignity."
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Trump at NATO Summit: Greenland 'Should Be Controlled by the United States, Not by Denmark'
"This will not happen," Denmark's prime minister said for the umpteenth time.
Jul 07, 2026
President Donald Trump on Tuesday renewed his calls for US control of Greenland—an autonomous territory of NATO member Denmark—in remarks delivered at the Atlantic alliance's summit in Türkiye.
Greenland "doesn't help Denmark," Trump told reporters in Ankara. "Denmark doesn't really spend money to help Greenland. But it's an important part for the United States."
Trump falsely claimed that the Arctic island "is surrounded by China ships and Russian ships" and "should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark."
"With all the money we spend to help [Europe] with Russia, we don't have to spend any money, we can remove all of our soldiers out of Europe," he said.
"Because as you probably noticed, Europe's a very different place than it was 20 years ago... and they better be careful with immigration and energy; if they're not careful with those two things, you're not gonna have a Europe anymore," Trump added.
Hours later, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at the Ankara summit that she expected allies to respect her country's sovereignty and understand that Greenland is not for sale.
"I have heard what the American president has said," Frederiksen told Danish media. "It is a well-known position of the United States that it wishes to own and acquire Greenland. And I hope that it will continue to be, as always, a well-known position of the kabingdom of Denmark that this will not happen."
Trump has publicly floated acquiring Greenland since his first term, when he even reportedly mulled swapping the island for the hurricane-ravaged US territory of Puerto Rico. The president renewed talk of gaining control of Greenland "whether they like it or not" after returning to the White House last year, while threatening allies who opposed his plans with additional punitive tariffs amid his roller-coaster global trade war.
Greenlanders, Danes, NATO allies, and much of the world were alarmed by Trump's threats to take Greenland by any means necessary—including armed invasion—which came amid a surge in "Donroe Doctrine" militarism.
Trump ordered dubious airstrikes on boats his administration claimed without evidence were transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, as well as the brief invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro on what critics called trumped-up narcoterrorism charges. The self-proclaimed "peace president" also threatened to retake the Panama Canal, launch armed attacks on Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico, and make Canada the "51st state."
Leaders of the European Union and NATO nations warned that any US attack on Greenland would effectively mean the end of the Atlantic alliance.
Only a handful of Greenland's 57,000 inhabitants want to join the United States. More than 8 in 10 favor independence amid often strained relations with Denmark and the legacy of a colonial history rife with abuses. Greenlanders enjoy a Nordic-style social welfare system that features universal healthcare; free higher education; and income, family, and employment benefits and protections that Americans lack.
In the United States, only 17% of those surveyed in a January Reuters/Ipsos poll said they favored acquiring Greenland by any means, and just 4% said it would be a "good idea" for Trump to seize the island by force.
Trump also said Tuesday that he "was very disappointed with NATO."
"We weren’t treated well because we did something in Iran," he said, referring to the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on the Mideast nation. "We don’t need anybody’s help, but before I asked they said they wouldn’t be there."
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US Strike on Iranian School Came After Commanders 'Bypassed Warnings' About Outdated Target Info
Sources told CNN that warnings were ignored due to "expediency."
Jul 07, 2026
US military commanders "bypassed warnings" indicating that their database of strike targets inside Iran was badly out of date shortly before launching a deadly attack on an Iranian primary school in the city of Minab, according to a Tuesday report from CNN.
Three sources told CNN that senior military officials received messages informing them that the intelligence behind the target list had been gathered years ago and "needed to be re-vetted."
Regardless, the proposed Iranian targets were added to a strike list shortly before the US launched an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, killing more than 150 schoolchildren along with over a dozen teachers.
Two of CNN's sources said senior commanders ignored the warnings out of "expediency," as they did not want to significantly delay providing target lists during the outset of the war, which Trump illegally launched in February without any authorization from the US Congress.
For months, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly dodged questions about the strike on the school, insisting that he didn't want to comment on an ongoing Pentagon investigation.
However, one of CNN's sources said that US military officials "knew within days how the mistake happened," as the school was targeted based on "obviously old info."
CNN noted that old satellite images showed the school once belonged to the same compound as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility. However, as recently as 2016, images showed "that a fence had been erected to separate the school from the rest of the base, and that a separate entrance to the school had been built."
Rutgers Law School Professor Adil Haque, noting that intelligence on many of the targets was more than a decade old, called the US decision to proceed with attacks "inexcusable."
The US Department of Defense has still not released its investigation into the bombing, drawing criticism from Palestinian-American policy analyst Yousef Munayyer, who reacted to the CNN report by describing the US military as being "quick to bomb, slow to investigate."
The slow pace of the investigation has also drawn criticism from Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee.
During a May congressional hearing, Smith grilled Adm. Brad Cooper about why the US hasn't taken responsibility for the school strike despite clear evidence that it was at fault.
"In the past, when we’ve had these type of mistakes, they’ve been quickly acknowledged," Smith said, "even if a further investigation is necessary to figure out prevention methods."
Smith also criticized Hegseth for showing a "callous disregard for any sort of rules of engagement or protecting of civilian life" during his tenure as defense secretary.
Last month, President Donald Trump brushed off responsibility for the strike on the school, stating that "mistakes are made" and "war is nasty."
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