What to Expect Once the Iran Nuclear Deal Collapses

A.J. Bursick

President Donald Trump is jockeying to end the Iran nuclear deal once and for all, and Iran wants to make us pay.
Add this to North Korea's constant threats, naval clashes in the South China Sea, and the recent Saudi Purge, and it can be tempting to stuff your money in your mattress or invest in commodit
ies like gold and silver.
But there's a better way to weather these mounting global tensions – an investing strategy that works no matter what ugliness is happening around the world.
Which
is good news, because Iran is none too happy that President Trump is dead set on seeing the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement – which, for the first time in nine years, allowed Iran to manufacture and export oil – nullified, once and for all.
Here's how we know – and how you can profit no matter what happens…

Trump's Iran Nuclear Deal Ultimatums Leave Congress No Choice

President Trump threatened, on Oct. 13, to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal unless Congress passed legislation that changed the agreement's terms.
Specifically, the president now wants legislators to amend U.S. law so that Congress can, going forward, sanction Iran for activities that were never part of the nuclear deal in the first place. This would essentially allow legislators on Capitol Hill to take punitive action against Tehran at will, and over matters not at all related to perceived nuclear proliferation.
And if Congress doesn't pass the amendment, President Trump will outright withdraw the United States from the nuclear agreement himself.
To do that, the president would only need to abstain from waiving U.S. sanctions on Iran after the next Congressional review.
"The U.S. president needs to recertify the agreement every three months," Business Insider explained on Sept. 25.
By failing to recertify the deal, Trump would be actively committing a "material breach of the agreement that would effectively destroy [the deal]," ABC News reported on Sept. 5.
As president, that will always be his call to make immediately following Congress' agreement compliance review.
And, given his ultimatum to Congress, it seems likely that Trump will follow through on his promise to re-impose prohibitions on Tehran.
The consequences, unfortunately, would be swift and damaging worldwide – but particularly for the United States.
Here's what will likely occur should Trump push for the nuke deal to collapse…

Iran Has Friends in High Places

China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the European Union signed the 2015 accord with Iran, alongside the United States. And each of these nations have since started working on separate corporate oil plans and deals that will bring the former group of nations billions in profits while allowing Iran to flourish from oil manufacturing and exporting once again.
Should Trump impose sanctions on Tehran in the meantime, however, those deals will become difficult to carry out, if not altogether impossible.
And the rest of the world won't let those deals go without a fight…
The European Union, for example, has already threatened to hold America in contempt of international law should Trump re-sanction Iran, reported The Guardian on Oct. 16.
The bloc could also undermine America's efforts in Afghanistan by refusing to contribute additional troops to NATO.
China could withhold or withdraw its own sanctions on North Korea – which have been made at Trump's repeated behest to curb the regime's own nuclear ambitions.
Or the Red Dragon could "accidentally" let its steel surplus rise again, hurting the steel industry stateside in much the same way it did until April of this year – by exporting excess steel worldwide to American corporate rivals for far cheaper prices.
Of course, Tehran's President Hassan Rouhani has delivered his own threats against the United States, even hinting at increased nuclear enrichment…
On Sept. 20, Rouhani said his country would "feel it had a 'free hand' if the U.S. broke the agreement by re-imposing sanctions," The Guardian reported.
Rouhani suggested Iran could then use that "free hand" to expand its work on uranium enrichment, which is currently strictly limited under the agreement; the leader of Tehran insisted his country would never seek to build nuclear warheads, though.
Still, Iran's leaders have a penchant for making contentious public suggestions about inflicting great harm to America's economy and stability.
On Nov. 1, both Tehran and Moscow held a joint conference during which Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to sever ties with the U.S. dollar.
Right now, the "petrodollar" (the dollar-based currency standard for international oil deals) is the standard worldwide. It's been that way since former U.S. President Richard Nixon struck a deal in 1974 with Saudi Arabia – chief oil exporter to the world then and, for the most part, now.
"By ignoring the negative propaganda of the enemies, that seek to weaken relations between countries, we can nullify U.S. sanctions, using methods such as eliminating the dollar and replacing it with national currencies in transactions between two or more parties; thus, isolate the Americans," Khameni said, according to Economic Times.
The supreme leader's ominous plan didn't elicit public agreement from Putin, but the Russian leader did condemn Trump's unilateral stance on the Iran nuclear deal.
Khameni is not alone in his desire to move away from the petrodollar; China is currently pressing to replace it with the "petro-yuan."
A global shift to another currency could wreak havoc on U.S. markets.