In a bold move taken directly out of the diplomatic playbook of an 8 year-old, the United States terminated a 1955 treaty with Iran that had all the real world consequences of a little kid taking his ball and going home after a game of kick-ball had stopped going his way. Given that the U.S. and Iran have had hostile relations since 1979 and the taking of American hostages in that country, the 1955 treaty had had precious little effect on the overall arc of US-Iranian relations for approximately 40 years.
The move came because the Iranians had cited the treaty in a case they won at the International Court of Justice this week seeking an order to lift sanctions on humanitarian goods to China. Pompeo asserted that the old treaty had been often-violated and that the Iranians were simply angry that the U.S. had unilaterally pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal (which, of course, the U.S. had done).
Pompeo said, “Iran has attempted to interfere with the sovereign rights of the United States to take lawful actions as necessary to protect our national security and Iran is abusing the ICJ for political and propaganda purposes.” This view, while it ignores the fact that the U.S. pulled out of the Iran deal without grounds in the eyes of many in the international community, is consistent with a broader Trump Administration view (that upholds an old American tradition) that international law is fine as long as it cuts out way but a threat to our sovereignty if it any way inhibits us from doing whatever we want to regardless of our reasons.
In other words, the whole thing was a fit of pique that will have no material impact on the U.S.-Iran relationship which, at the moment, is, to use a diplomatic term, a mess.
However, by reaching into history to find old treaties to tear up, Pompeo may be setting the stage for future foot-stomping news conferences. For example, if relations with China deteriorate further, there is always the opportunity to ceremonially tear-up a yellowed copy of the Treaty of Wangxia, which was signed on July 3, 1844 and provided for Most Favored Nation Status for the U.S. with China as well as for the right for Americans in China to learn Chinese, which prior law had prohibited. The agreement has long since by overtaken by other agreements but the ceremony would no doubt be quite dramatic and would have the added benefit of not further deepening the current trade war between the U.S. and China nor making worse security relations which this week alone have seen damaged by the Secretary of Defense having to cancel a planned China trip (because no Chinese officials would meet with him) and by a dangerous confrontation between U.S. and Chinese naval vessels in the South China Sea.
Sometimes diplomacy is the appearance of taking a strong action while actually doing much less. And there are loads more dusty-old treaties where those two came from.
