What Does Trump's Jerusalem Decision Mean for Iran?
Farhad Rezaei
Politics, Middle East
The decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has drawn the Muslim world's gaze away from Iran.
Breaking with decades of U.S. foreign policy and defying the international opposition, on December 6, 2017, President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. He also promised that in time, the American embassy in Tel Aviv would be moved to Jerusalem.
Trump was acting on October 23, 1995, congressional “Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995,” (JEA 1995) which urged to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and called on the White House to relocate the embassy.
The law gave the executive the right to issue of a waiver, a loophole which presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama utilized to avoid the move. The previous administrations considered changing the status quo to be misgauged at best and dangerous at worse. The reasons are well known, ranging from the impeding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to creating anti-American violence in the Arab and Muslim world. But the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby in the United States, including evangelical Christians led by the Vice President Mike Pence, had persuaded the president who overrode the objections of the Department of Defense and the CIA.
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