Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump Is Now Free to Fight for Iranian Freedom

The most urgent task after the nuclear deal is increasing the odds of success for the democratic uprising.

May 8, 2018 at 6:20 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

The signature green of Iran’s protest movement is not going away.
Photographer: Roksana Tafreshi/AFP, via Getty Images

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President Donald Trump finally made good on his promise Tuesday to get out of the Iran nuclear deal. As I have written, I would have kept the agreement in limbo and let the regime's clerics twist in the wind. But what's done is done.

Much will be written about what the U.S. and its allies should do on the nuclear file. Iran's leaders have made vague threats, and the West must prepare for the prospect of losing visibility into the country's declared nuclear infrastructure. That said, the most urgent task now for Trump is increasing the odds of success for Iran's democracy movement.