{"id":315338,"date":"2026-04-27T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=315338"},"modified":"2026-04-23T08:08:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:08:44","slug":"how-the-international-community-obtained-a-nuclear-weapons-free-agreement-with-iran%e2%80%95and-lost-it-thanks-to-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/04\/how-the-international-community-obtained-a-nuclear-weapons-free-agreement-with-iran%e2%80%95and-lost-it-thanks-to-donald-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"How the International Community Obtained a Nuclear Weapons-Free Agreement with Iran\u2015and Lost It Thanks to Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

21 Apr 2026 – <\/em>If the objective of the U.S. war upon Iran is to ensure that that country does not develop nuclear weapons, that goal was attained more than a decade ago through a far different approach than the one now being followed by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Iran, as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970, had agreed to forgo the development of nuclear weapons.\u00a0 Even so, fears grew<\/a> during the early 21st<\/sup> century that Iran\u2019s uranium enrichment program, used for peaceful purposes, might be diverted to the development of the Bomb, thereby throwing the volatile Middle East into yet another crisis, including a frenzied nuclear arms race.<\/p>\n

As a result, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France) and Germany began lengthy negotiations with Iran, offering it various incentives to halt uranium enrichment.\u00a0 A key incentive was the lifting of international sanctions, which were having a severe impact on sales of Iran\u2019s oil and, thus, its economy.\u00a0 After the election in 2013 of an Iranian reformer, Hassan Rouhani, as president, the negotiators came to a preliminary accord to guide their talks toward a comprehensive nuclear agreement.<\/p>\n

The final agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was negotiated by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany, and the European Union.\u00a0 Signed in July 2015, it granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for significant restrictions on its nuclear program.\u00a0 These included Iran\u2019s agreement to ban production of highly enriched uranium or plutonium, ensure that its key nuclear facilities pursued only civilian work, and limit the numbers and types of centrifuges that it could operate.\u00a0 In addition, Iran agreed to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN\u2019s nuclear watchdog, unfettered access to its nuclear facilities and undeclared sites.<\/p>\n

In the United States<\/a>, the Iran nuclear agreement was strongly supported by the Obama administration, which played a key role in securing it, and by Democrats, but denounced by Republicans.\u00a0 Jeb Bush, then a leading presidential contender, called it \u201cdangerous, deeply flawed, and short-sighted,\u201d while U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham claimed that it was a \u201cdeath sentence for the state of Israel.\u201d Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel\u2019s Prime Minister, lobbied ferociously against U.S. acceptance of the Iran agreement, furiously attacking it<\/a> as a \u201chistoric mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the opposition, the agreement went into effect in January 2016 and, initially, had smooth sailing<\/a>.\u00a0 The IAEA certified that Iran was keeping its commitments, nations repealed or suspended their sanctions, Iran\u2019s oil exports surged, and the United States and European nations unfroze about $100 billion of Iran\u2019s frozen assets.<\/p>\n

In May 2018, however, Donald Trump, Obama\u2019s successor as President, breaking with America\u2019s European allies, unilaterally withdrew the U.S. government from the Iran agreement<\/a> and announced the reimposition of oil and banking sanctions. \u00a0\u201cIt is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of this deal,\u201d Trump announced.\u00a0 Assailing the Iran agreement as \u201cdefective to its core,\u201d Trump condemned it<\/a> for failing to deal with Iran\u2019s ballistic missile program and its proxy warfare in the Middle East, as well as for the agreement\u2019s 10-year sunset provision.<\/p>\n

In response, Iranian President Rouhani<\/a>, stating that the U.S. government had failed to \u201crespect its commitment,\u201d declared that he had \u201cordered the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to be ready for action if needed, so that if necessary we can resume our enrichment on an industrial level without any limitations.\u201d\u00a0 Even so, he promised, he would wait to speak about this with allies and the other signatories to the agreement.<\/p>\n

Thereafter, things went downhill.\u00a0 Although France, Germany, and Britain sought to keep the agreement alive by evading the U.S. banking sanctions through a barter system, this effort eventually collapsed.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Trump got into a verbal brawl with Rouhani, threatening Iran<\/a> with what he called \u201cCONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.\u201d\u00a0 Ultimately, Iran began<\/a> exceeding the agreed-upon limits to its stockpile, enriching uranium to higher concentrations, and developing new centrifuges.<\/p>\n

Although Joe Biden, as a 2020 presidential candidate, promised<\/a> to rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement and \u201cto work with our allies to strengthen and extend it,\u201d by the time he was in office the relationship with Iran had deteriorated too far<\/a> to make this feasible.\u00a0 Coming under a new, more reactionary leadership, the Iranian regime grew more repressive, as well as more distant from the United States and more politically toxic.\u00a0 As a result, a new agreement was increasingly out of reach.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, are there any lessons that can be learned from these events?<\/p>\n

One is that, to the degree that the development of nuclear weapons by Iran is a currently a problem, it is a problem of Trump\u2019s making.\u00a0 Or as Biden put it<\/a> years ago, Trump\u2019s pullout from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement was \u201ca self-inflicted disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another is that getting a country to forgo nuclear weapons development is easier to accomplish through international\u2015and especially UN Security Council\u2015action than through unilateral action.\u00a0 A threat from one nation to another can easily be viewed and dismissed as bullying.\u00a0 But pressure from a worldwide organization representing the community of nations has greater impact.<\/p>\n

More generally, if nations are going to be asked (or pressured) to forgo development of nuclear weapons, it is useful to have a framework that treats nations equally.\u00a0 The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty fosters this equality through a bargain, in which the non-nuclear nations forgo building nuclear weapons in exchange for the nuclear nations eliminating their own nuclear arsenals.\u00a0 The next time Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu threaten to annihilate Iranian civilization<\/a>, someone might remind them of that.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Lawrence S. Wittner (<\/em>https:\/\/www.lawrenceswittner.com\/<\/em><\/a> ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY\/Albany and the author of <\/em>Confronting the Bomb<\/em><\/a> (Stanford University Press).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Apr 2026 – If the objective of the U.S. war upon Iran is to ensure that that country does not develop nuclear weapons, that goal was attained more than a decade ago through a far different approach than the one now being followed by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":110827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[3281,504,742,2582,1565,450,249,70],"class_list":["post-315338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weapons-of-mass-destruction","tag-evil-empire","tag-international-relations","tag-iran","tag-nuclear-deal","tag-nuclear-free-middle-east","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315339,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315338\/revisions\/315339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}