The JCPOA was far more damaging than most Americans realize.
The JCPOA was far more damaging than most Americans realize.
A lthough U.S.-Israeli military action did enormous damage to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and set it back decades, some on the left are trying to rewrite history to claim these strikes would have been unnecessary if President Donald Trump had not withdrawn from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the agreement the Obama administration negotiated with Iran, supposedly to stop its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
JCPOA supporters insist this deal successfully contained Iran’s nuclear ambitions and that Tehran was complying with its terms. Among the apologists are Robert Malley and Richard Nephew, both of whom helped negotiate the original agreement and later worked on the Biden administration’s unsuccessful effort to revive it. They argue that remaining in the JCPOA would have better served global security and blame Iran’s subsequent nuclear advances on Trump’s withdrawal.
Here are eight reasons, drawn from my forthcoming book Iran, Nuclear Brinkmanship, and the Oval Office, why the JCPOA was fraudulent and dangerous.
First, the JCPOA was a highly unpopular agreement imposed on the American people in defiance of the U.S. Constitution.
An August 2015 poll showed Americans opposed the deal by a 2-to-1 margin, with 64 percent believing that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had misled the public about it. Most members of Congress opposed the JCPOA, including several prominent Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Ben Cardin (Md.), Senator Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Representatives Alcee Hastings (Fla.), Brad Sherman (Calif.), and Steve Israel (N.Y.).
Congressional opposition was so intense that the Obama administration refused to submit the JCPOA to the Senate for ratification. Instead, it was a non-binding executive agreement that relied on a controversial “resolution of disapproval” process to circumvent the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties. Former assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy called the resolution of disapproval “a constitutional perversity.” Senate Democrats used the filibuster to prevent this process from rejecting the agreement.
Even more controversial, rather than seeking Senate ratification to create a binding U.S. commitment to the JCPOA, the Obama administration had the U.N. Security Council pass Resolution 2231, which endorsed the deal under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. Obama administration officials argued that because Chapter VII resolutions are binding on all U.N. member states, the resolution obligated the United States — and future presidents — to uphold the nuclear deal. Senate Republicans strongly rejected this as an evasion of the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) called this maneuver an “affront to the American people.” President Trump disregarded the U.N. Security Council resolution when he withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in May 2018.
Second, the JCPOA was an extremely weak agreement that effectively conceded a path to the bomb to Iran.
The JCPOA featured inadequate verification measures, barred U.N. inspectors from key military sites, allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium with more than 5,000 centrifuges while the deal was in effect, and permitted the regime to keep developing advanced centrifuges. Unlike the U.S. and Israeli military strikes in 2025 and 2026, which destroyed or heavily damaged thousands of centrifuges, the JCPOA did not require the destruction of any centrifuges or other Iranian nuclear assets. Instead, under the JCPOA, roughly 13,000 centrifuges were removed from operation and placed in storage rather than being dismantled or destroyed.
As a result, the agreement merely delayed an Iranian nuclear weapon while allowing Iran to continue weapons-related nuclear work. It also included short sunset clauses under which limits on centrifuge numbers, enrichment levels, and related activities were scheduled to expire or phase out between eight and 15 years after adoption.
Most damaging of all, the foundation for the deal was laid in 2011 when then–Senator John Kerry, acting for the Obama administration, sent a message to Iran through Oman signaling U.S. acceptance of Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. This reversed decades of U.S. and European policy that had denied Iran this technology precisely because it can be easily diverted to produce weapons-grade fuel. Although Kerry later denied as Secretary of State that Iran possessed such a right, Tehran never relinquished the concession, which has complicated every subsequent administration’s approach.
Third, there were credible reports of Iran circumventing the JCPOA.
German state and federal intelligence agencies documented dozens of secret Iranian attempts to procure technology with nuclear-weapons applications in violation of the JCPOA and Iran’s reporting obligations to the IAEA. Some of these efforts involved uranium-enrichment technology. The nuclear archive extracted by Israel in 2018 revealed extensive details of Iran’s covert nuclear-weapons program, including three undeclared sites that violated the agreement and later led to IAEA censures in 2022, 2024, and 2025.
In 2016, Iran attempted to acquire large quantities of high-strength carbon fiber for advanced-centrifuge rotors in violation of reporting requirements. In July 2018, Iran announced it had completed a factory to manufacture such rotors, enabling higher rates of enrichment. The scale of this facility far exceeded JCPOA limits on advanced-centrifuge manufacturing and deployment and later helped Iran surge production of near-weapons-grade uranium in 2021.
Fourth, the JCPOA rested on misleading and politicized intelligence analysis.
This included the controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear-weapons program in the fall of 2003 and excluded uranium enrichment from its definition of a weapons program. Former CIA director James Schlesinger sharply criticized the estimate in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Stupid Intelligence.” The Obama administration later cited the NIE to argue that allowing Iran to continue enrichment posed little proliferation risk.
Obama officials advanced a similar false claim by asserting that the JCPOA’s provision to limit Iran’s enrichment under the JCPOA to 3.67 percent uranium-235 (reactor-grade) was safe because weapons-grade uranium requires 90 percent enrichment. This assertion was misleading. Due to the physics of uranium enrichment, most of the time and effort required to enrich uranium to weapons-grade occurs in the initial stage — from natural uranium to reactor-grade. Progressing from reactor-grade to weapons-grade enrichment is far easier and faster. Combined with the flawed 2007 NIE, these statements misrepresented the proliferation risks of uranium enrichment and downplayed the risks of permitting Iran to maintain an enrichment capability.
Fifth, the JCPOA included secret side deals between Iran and the IAEA that the Obama administration refused to share with Congress.
There were at least two secret JCPOA side deals. One permitted Iran to collect its environmental samples itself at the Parchin military base — where nuclear-warhead-related explosive testing was suspected — on behalf of the IAEA. The other concerned how the IAEA and the U.S. would sweep Iran’s prior nuclear weapons work under the rug if it cooperated with a fall 2015 investigation into these activities. Although Iran attempted to limit the effectiveness of the Parchin inspection, evidence of covert nuclear weapons-related work was still detected. Iran also failed to cooperate with the 2015 IAEA investigation, leading the agency to suggest that the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program had not been resolved and that the program may have continued until 2009. Nevertheless, the Obama administration and its European allies gave Iran credit for simply participating in the IAEA probe and closed the file on Iran’s past nuclear weapons work at a December 2015 IAEA meeting, clearing the way for full implementation of the JCPOA in January 2016.
Sixth, the JCPOA included large, undisclosed payments to Iran, as well as a prisoner exchange that brought innocent Americans home but released terrorists to their sponsor.
When President Obama announced full implementation of the JCPOA, he also announced the release of five Americans held by Iran in exchange for the release of Iranian nationals held by the United States. Administration officials claimed the prisoner exchange was separate from the nuclear deal and that a $400 million payment was reimbursement of an old debt, not a quid pro quo.
These claims were false and misleading. The prisoner exchange was closely linked to JCPOA negotiations. The five Americans were traded for six Iranian dual nationals and one Iranian, while 14 others (13 Iranians and one Turk) accused of facilitating arms transfers for Iran were removed from INTERPOL wanted lists.
The administration effectively paid ransom. Obama officials announced a $1.7 billion payment to settle an old U.S. debt to Iran but did not disclose that the American prisoners were not released until a U.S. plane landed in Iran carrying $400 million in euros and Swiss francs. An additional $1.3 billion was later transferred on two subsequent flights.
Seventh, the JCPOA lifted sanctions from notorious Iranian terrorists.
One of the most controversial features of the agreement was the removal of sanctions from Iranian terrorist individuals and organizations. These included the IRGC Air Force, the IRGC Air Force al-Ghadir Missile Command, the IRGC Quds Force (responsible for Iran’s global terrorist operations), Qasem Soleimani, and Ahmad Vahidi, who was involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina and is now the IRGC commander in chief.
The decision to waive sanctions against Soleimani, longtime commander of the Quds Force, was especially controversial. He directed Iran’s overseas terrorist operations, armed and trained terrorist militias across the Middle East — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite groups in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen — and oversaw campaigns that killed hundreds of American troops through roadside bombs and other attacks during the Iraq War. President Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Soleimani in January 2020.
Lifting these sanctions amounted to appeasement and contradicted repeated claims by U.S. and European leaders that the nuclear deal addressed only Iran’s nuclear program.
Eighth, the JCPOA ignored Iran’s missile program and weakened U.N. missile sanctions.
Because ballistic missiles are a nuclear-weapons delivery system and Iran possessed the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East, Obama administration officials stated in 2014 and early 2015 that a nuclear deal would cover Iran’s ballistic-missile program. That issue was dropped from the talks in the final two weeks at Iran’s insistence. Although U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 extended missile-related restrictions until October 2023, it significantly weakened them and no longer required Iran to refrain from ballistic-missile tests. Iranian officials announced shortly after the JCPOA took effect in early 2016 that they would not honor even these diluted restrictions. Iran’s missile program was left intact and grew more sophisticated over the following decade.
Could the JCPOA be fixed? Although this seems improbable given the serious flaws in the agreement listed above, President Trump gave his national-security officials and European diplomats more than a year to improve and extend the JCPOA before he announced the U.S. withdrawal in May 2018. The effort went nowhere for several reasons: Iran refused any modifications; European officials did not take Trump’s withdrawal threats seriously; and senior Trump officials — including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, and State Department official Brian Hook — delayed action in the hope that Trump would drop the issue. That was a poor choice and contributed to Trump’s decision to dismiss McMaster and Tillerson after roughly one year.
Joe Biden condemned Trump’s exit from the JCPOA and pledged during his 2020 campaign to repair and rejoin it. Yet despite risky and overly generous offers from Biden’s negotiating team, led by Malley and Nephew, the administration could not revive the deal. Iran rejected any changes and demanded unacceptable concessions, including the lifting of all U.S. sanctions imposed since 2015 and compensation for the 2018 withdrawal. Although the Biden team considered several controversial concessions in early 2022 — including removing the Revolutionary Guard Corps from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations — the talks collapsed that spring amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Iran’s support for the Russian war effort.
The reality is that the JCPOA was fatally flawed and provided Iran a clear runway to continue and expand its nuclear-weapons effort. President Trump was fully justified in leaving the agreement in 2018. Most of all, and regardless of what one may think of the 2025 and 2026 U.S.-Israeli military action against Iran, there is no question that the JCPOA fell well short of that military action in disrupting Iran’s nuclear weapons program.