Given all of his compelling reasons to support the thesis stated in the headline, I am wondering why the Empire concluded this nuclear deal with Iran unless it was a setup for renewed hostile actions against Iran.
Events since then have suggested a major reason for the Empire in concluding this deal. First, there was the agreement with Erdogan's government in Turkey (who have their own reasons), to use their airbases and together with Turkey to wage a pretense of campaign against ISIS, but in reality a military campaign against Syria. Thus with the Iran nuclear agreement and the lifting of sanctions by the UN, Empire directors saw the Iran deal as a way to neutralize Iran in their efforts to topple the Syrian government, and more recently to support Saudia Arabia's war in Yemen which has stepped up. As Eric Draitser argued in his balanced assessment of the Iran deal:
It may seem counter-intuitive, but the harsh sanctions and restrictions on Iran gave it far more freedom to act independently in the region as it was exposed to far less economic risk. Were Iran instead cooperating with the West, it is a virtual certainty that the Syrian government would have long since fallen, and Syria would be a failed state similar to Libya or, at best, a puppet state of Turkey.
The importance of this point should not be understated. Iran’s lack of economic engagement with the West allowed it to grow into the counter-terrorism force that it has become in the region.