12 May 2026 (intro visible then pay-walled, can sign in for trial access) Eight years ago, President Donald Trump took the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known more commonly as the Iran nuclear deal. In the years since, half of Washington has continued to argue that the JCPOA was “the best possible deal,” with the other half maintaining that “there was a better deal.” It has been the background music to every twist and turn in U.S. Iran policy since 2018 but has come to the fore again since Trump launched Operation Epic Fury.
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Against the backdrop of the sudden and sustained US and Israeli attacks against Iranian defense and infrastructure targets, pedestrians and policymakers alike around the world are wondering why war is their chosen course of action. The author presents tenets of the JCPOA, which Trump pulled out of in his first term.
JCPOA was a kick the “can down the road” policy. The real question is whether or not Iran should ever get to have Nukes.
If no, JCPOA would have had to be renegotiated anyway and military action around this time would have been likely anyways.
If yes, you don’t have many braincells.
Yes we would be better off with the JCPOA because it would still exist only in a world without a President Trump.
Given that Pakistan, India, and North Korea have nukes yet haven’t blown up the world, I fail to see how even a hardline regime such as Iran’s would elevate the dangers further. Proliferation can’t be stopped.
Hard to know — would have liked to see it play out.
At face value it wasn’t a good deal, but maybe it would have cooled relations down in the long run.
No.
For one it had a sunset anyway expired Oct 2025.
Two Biden was big on re-entering but only with improvements as he also saw it as inadequate. He gave up on that for multiple reasons but basically nobody on either side wanted to re enter it without improvements. When that happens there’s probably a good reason.
So basically no options to be better off with it.
Either it would be defunct without sanctions or defunct with sanctions those are pretty much the only choices for any timeline beyond 2025.
I’ll be dv’ed to hell ,because feelings , but not a soul will be able to refute this with supportable fact. History is immutable.
My hottest take is Obama never should’ve made the deal with iran
A president by design cannot enter into a treaty without congress calling it a deal to sidestep that led to this