AVOIDING THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF A BAD IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the Obama administration and
European negotiators naively hoped would curb Iran’s nuclear program, was a catastrophic failure. The Obama administration’s weak-handed negotiations not only failed to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but also paved the way for Iran to become a legitimate nuclear weapons threshold state. Worse, the deal rewarded and fueled the Islamic Republic’s malign behavior with billions of dollars in sanctions relief and lifting arms embargoes. Recognizing these critical flaws, President Trump slammed the JCPOA as “the worst deal ever negotiated” and wisely withdrew from it in 2018, opting instead for a successful “maximum pressure” campaign that severely weakened Iran’s economy and strengthened U.S. leverage for future negotiations.
The Biden administration’s return to Obama-era appeasement has brought Iran closer than ever before to producing a nuclear weapon. Recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports indicate that Iran now possesses a large enough stockpile of 60% highly-enriched uranium to build seven nuclear weapons—a stockpile that doubled over the last four months alone. This rapid progress was enabled by the Biden administration’s policies, which boosted Iran’s accessible foreign exchange reserves from a minuscule $4 billion at the end of the Trump administration to nearly $34 billion by the end of Biden’s term. Iran earned over $100 billion from the export of oil alone when President Biden failed to enforce U.S. sanctions.
Despite such troubling trend lines under the Biden administration, as a result of joint U.S.-Israeli military and other actions in the wake of the October 7 attacks, the Islamic Republic and its proxies now find themselves as weak as ever. Tehran’s air defenses are degraded, Hezbollah and Hamas and their other Iranian proxies are weakened, and the regime has lost a key ally with the fall of Assad in Syria. The Trump administration’s reimposition of maximum pressure and establishment of a credible military threat against the Iranian nuclear program have significantly strengthened America’s negotiating posture. As the United States engages in high-level negotiations with Iranian officials, these key lessons from the JCPOA must be considered to avoid repeating past mistakes.
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