Presidential candidate Donald Trump disparaged the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran in characteristically superlative terms: “My number-one priority,” he said to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March 2016, “is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making, and let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic—for America, for Israel, and for the whole Middle East. . . . We have rewarded the world’s leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion, and we received absolutely nothing in return.”

We didn’t disagree with Trump’s reasoning then, and we don’t now. This magazine has been sharply critical of much the president has done, but on two vital questions—Iran and North Korea—we believe his instincts are sound. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, negotiated by the Obama administration and signed in 2015, took pressure off one of the world’s most aggressive sponsors of terrorism in exchange for empty promises not to pursue its aim of building a nuclear weapon. The deal was, indeed, catastrophic.