Day 475: The biggest takeaways from Trump pulling out of Iran deal

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would withdraw the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. JCPOA — informally known as the Iran deal — was signed by the U.S. under Barack Obama, China, Russia and the EU. In its simplest terms, the deal traded the removing of sanctions against Iran for Iran halting the building of nuclear weapons.

Trump’s announcement has a number of significant potential effects.

• Iran is free to continue building a nuclear weapon

Iran has already received a number of benefits related to the deal, including a large influx of previously-owed money. In return, and by virtually all accounts, Iran has been complying with their end, opening the country to numerous inspections and passing every single one. Iran’s compliance was confirmed by Secretary of State (and former CIA director) Mike Pompeo during his confirmation hearings and by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

As part of the deal, Iran reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium by 97 percent. On top of that, Iran could only use ancient and inefficient centrifuges that would make it virtually impossible for them to build a nuclear weapon. The amount of those centrifuges was slashed from 19,000 to 5,000.

Now that U.S. has pulled out of the deal, Iran can take the spoils of the deal (the money) and claim that since the U.S. is no longer in compliance (by adding new sanctions), they’re free to continue building a nuclear weapon. Other nations in the deal will of course push back on this, and will try to entice Iran to honor the deal, but since the U.S. was the first to violate the agreement, U.S. allies position has been substantially weakened.

• The U.S.’s credibility is weakened

It has been a tradition in the U.S. that deals are honored, no matter what president makes them. Trump has pulled the U.S. out of a deal that has been certified time and time again, and by all accounts has had compliance from all sides. He withdrew the U.S. because he claimed it was a weak deal, but the aftershocks of the withdrawal are substantial.

With a North Korea meeting looming, Trump’s decision undermines the idea that the nations could enter into a long-term deal since someone else could simply unwind the deal in a few years. If North Korea was actually thinking about denuclearizing, one look at what just happened in Iran is likely to give them serious pause.

• Trump lost his best chance to improve the deal

One of Trump’s biggest complaints was that the deal wasn’t permanent and that some provisions only ran through 2025.

But supplementing the deal to have it extend farther into the future was a readily attainable goal that would have likely drawn bipartisan support. If both sides have been complying — and, again, there’s no proof otherwise — then extending the deal would likely have made sense for all signatories.

The current deal took years of effort by multiple nations from across the world. Scrapping it today and writing a better one tomorrow is simply not realistic. While getting rid of it may have made some of his supporters happy, it ultimately moves backwards from Trump’s stated goals of a long-term solution to Iran’s nuclear ambition.

475 days in, 987 to go

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