Trump’s Iran deal must be nothing like Obama’s

It’s unclear whom exactly the White House is bargaining with or whether those officials will have the power to implement an agreement. We do, however, know what a “good deal” looks like: everything former President Barack Obama’s Iran deal wasn’t.

A popular talking point among left-wing punditry maintains that Trump is seeking an off-ramp for his allegedly unpopular and failed war that looks exactly like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal Obama struck with the mullahs years ago, which the president ripped up in 2018. That’s clearly untrue.

The Obama deal’s restrictions, as feeble as they were, would already have sunset. Under the JCPOA, Iran was not only allowed to continue uranium enrichment, but it wasn’t compelled to decommission any of its reactors.

Nor did the Obama deal put any limits on the Iranian ballistic missile program, not even on intercontinental ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. And, incidentally, though the regime has claimed it had no plans to develop such weaponry, the other day, it fired a missile at the joint U.K.-U.S. Diego Garcia military base 2,500 miles away in the Indian Ocean.

Of course, there was no genuine way to verify that any of the JCPOA’s stipulations were being met by the clerics since the agreement didn’t contain anytime-anywhere inspections.

The Obama deal, however, was worse than nothing because it gave the regime protection from Israeli strikes. The clerics could act with impunity, benefitting from sanctions relief — not to mention, more ransom payments from Democratic presidents — all the while funding their destabilizing proxy armies, building a ballistic shield, and shrinking the breakout time for large-scale enrichment and nuke weaponization to months or weeks.

A decade ago, Trump called the JCPOA the “worst deal ever negotiated.” But I suppose it all depends on how you view the Middle East.

If the goal of the JCPOA was to stop the clerics from nuclearizing and emerging as an even bigger threat to regional and world peace, then, indeed, the deal was disastrous.

Then again, if the deal was, as many rightly suspect, the Obama administration’s way of lifting the mullahs as a counterforce to Israel and Saudi Arabia, then it made complete sense.

Listen to former Obama administration officials these days, and it all makes sense. Take the likes of Ben Rhodes or Tommy Vietor, neither of whom had the education, training, or experience to deal with any serious Middle East issues. (Though, to be fair, a random social media autodidact probably has a deeper insight into the world than the Obama-era D.C. blob foreign policy scholar, so maybe it’s a question of moral clarity rather than experience.)

Vietor recently called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “despicable liar” for reiterating that the Islamic regime was pursuing a nuclear weapon. This, he argued, was an impossibility because “Ali Khamenei had issued a fatwa against developing nuclear weapons.”

It’s mind-boggling enough that anyone would take the world’s most notorious tyrant at his word. But the anti-nuclear weapon “fatwa” is a myth, anyway. Khamenei merely alluded to the proactive use of weapons of mass destruction in speeches, not in writing. Of course, even if Khamenei had issued a fatwa, a nonbinding legal opinion, on the matter, the doctrine of taqiyya allows Shia Muslims to mislead their enemies. And building nuclear facilities 300 feet under granite mountains is a big clue.

Then, Democrats and the isolationist Right naysayers have been wrong about everything having to do with Iran thus far. So, they’ve moved on from predicting World War III and endless quagmires to lamenting the lack of a clear-cut “strategy” to ending the conflict. But Trump’s reported prewar demands of Iran remain. And they are nothing like Obama’s Iran deal.

The regime should once and for all dismantle its nuclear facilities in Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow and hand over its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, which the regime reportedly admitted to Trump envoy Steve Witkoff could make 11 bombs. Iran is already a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, pledging never to acquire nuclear weapons. So, there’s no need for any sunsetting of the agreement. Iran should suspend its ballistic program. It should cease funding and assisting terrorist organizations.

Since the mullahs have used negotiations to string along past administrations and extract concessions, sanctions relief should be contingent on Iran upholding its end of the agreement.

Anything less is a failure.

Despite the demoralizing efforts of the media, the U.S. and the Iranian regime aren’t negotiating on equal footing. It bears repeating that, thus far, the Iran war is perhaps the most devastating and effective military campaign in modern history. At worst, the U.S. and Israel have decapitated decades of institutional knowledge and experience of the Islamic regime. The Iranian ballistic program has been vastly degraded, as has Iran’s ability to wage effective conventional war or to prop up its proxy militias.

Iran’s only real leverage right now is to undermine the world’s economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz, which only reinforces the argument that it should not be in possession of ballistic missile programs, Chinese supersonic weapons, and nuclear weapons.

CONGRESS SHOULD APPROVE IRAN WAR SUPPLEMENTAL FUNDS

If the remaining regime officials don’t agree to stop, Trump can keep pounding their military and government infrastructure until it reaches a tier of leadership that will talk. Or better yet, collapse. With a high-impact, low-casualty war, Trump has devastated our enemy’s military and brought back credible deterrence.

War is no panacea, of course. Unlike anything in the JCPOA, however, those are big, tangible wins.