“The DEAL that we are making with Iran will be FAR BETTER than the JCPOA,” Trump posted on Truth Social last month, calling the Obama-era agreement “one of the Worst Deals ever,” “DANGEROUS, and a Complete Embarrassment to our Country.”

“It was a guaranteed Road to a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump said, “which will not, and cannot, happen with the Deal we’re working on.”

With that in mind, here are some of the key criticisms of the 2015 deal. Along with what a new, “better” 2026 agreement would have to include to qualify as “far better.”

Duration:

One of the biggest problems critics had with the Obama deal was that it was essentially a stopgap agreement that expired in 2030. In return for permanent, up-front concessions — such as relief from U.S. and EU sanctions — restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program were scheduled to “sunset” after 15 years. And in the case of the production of new centrifuges, just 10 years. 

Trump has insisted he wants a forever deal, not just a temporary moratorium. When Vice President JD Vance, during short-lived negotiations in Islamabad, reportedly floated a possible suspension of all Iranian nuclear activity for 20 years, Trump immediately nixed the idea.

“I’ve been saying they can’t have nuclear weapons,” Trump told the New York Post about the proposal from the U.S.-Iran talks in Pakistan. “So, I don’t like the 20 years.”

“I want to have it everlasting,” Trump said later at a White House event. “It would take them 20 years to rebuild. But I don’t want to do that.”

Enrichment:

The old deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium-235 at 3.67% for 15 years, a low level suitable for peaceful purposes, such as nuclear power plants. The enrichment activity was limited to one site, Natanz.

Critics argued that it allowed Iran to move closer to a nuclear weapon while technically remaining in compliance with the terms of the agreement. And that the deal basically shut the door on future negotiations to find a more permanent solution.

The problem with the limits became obvious after the United States withdrew from the deal in 2018 and Iran started enriching uranium to a higher purity as its stockpile of 60% uranium grew in recent years to 460 kilograms, just over 1,000 pounds.

Iran insists it has an inalienable right to enrich uranium as a sovereign country. But arms control experts argue that’s just a smokescreen.

“They don’t need to enrich uranium. They want to enrich uranium because they want to have a weapons program,” said Brett McGurk, a former national security official, who is now an analyst on CNN, invoking the United Arab Emirates just across the Persian Gulf from Iran. “The UAE is a country near Iran. They have a world-class civil nuclear program, about 20% of UAE’s electricity. They don’t enrich uranium. Iran has spent almost $1 trillion; their nuclear program provides almost no electricity to the country.”

“There will be no enrichment of uranium,” Trump said in a Truth Social post in early April, insisting any deal would include the U.S. working with Iran to recover the highly enriched uranium believed buried under rubble from last summer’s B-2 raid, which he calls “nuclear dust.”

Mistrust and verify:

Trump has ping-ponged between accusing Iran of refusing to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons (as he did Feb. 28 when he announced the start of the war) to claiming Iran has agreed to give them up as part of a nearly completed deal.

“So very important is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, and they have agreed to that,” Trump told reporters April 16, “Iran’s agreed to that, and they have agreed to it very powerfully.”

The fact is, Iran has consistently said it will never have a nuclear weapon. It was a key provision of the 2015 deal, which stated, “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.”

The problem this time around is that neither side trusts the other. Iran made a deal, not just with the U.S., but also with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union. And Trump tore it up.

Twice now, Trump has bombed Iran in the middle of negotiations with no warning. 

The Iranians are deeply mistrustful of the U.S, even more so than when President Joe Biden’s administration tried to get Iran back into the JCPOA.

“They said to us, what guarantees do we have that another administration won’t come along and do exactly what President Trump did the first term and tear it up?” former Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on CNN. “They wanted some kind of guarantee, maybe congressional approval of the agreement, as a treaty. Incredibly hard to do with our politics.”

Inspections:

The previous deal included a complex inspection regime conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Up until the time the U.S. withdrew, the IAEA certified that Iran seemed to be abiding by the terms, which were also being enforced by Russia and China.

At the time, the group United Against Nuclear Iran said in a report, “The JCPOA does not require Iran to submit to ‘anytime, anywhere’ IAEA inspections of facilities and military sites where nuclear activities are suspected to have occurred. Instead, Iran, a serial cheater on its nuclear and other international obligations, can delay inspections of such facilities for up to 24 days, giving Iran precious time to cover up evidence of covert nuclear activities.”

Any inspection regime in a Trump agreement would have to be more intrusive and include things such as 24/7 video monitoring of sites, along with inspectors on the ground.

Missiles, drones, and proxies:

The 2015 agreement did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program or its use of proxy forces to attack U.S. troops in the region. 

Trump says Iran’s military capabilities have been so degraded by Operation Epic Fury that the issue isn’t as important as it once was. 

“Their navy, so they had 159 ships. Every ship is right now underwater,” Trump said. “I mean, it’s going to be hard for them to make a naval comeback. OK, now they have an air force. Every one of their planes has been shot down or has been decimated. They have missiles. About 82% are gone, and they have drones, and most of them are gone. Most of the factories are mostly gone.”

So any enforceable limitations on Iran’s missile program, especially long-range ICBMs that could target the U.S., would be an improvement over the JCPOA. 

Strait of Hormuz:

And then there’s a major challenge that Obama didn’t have to worry about — reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ensuring it returns once again to its status as an open, free international waterway. 

That’s no easy negotiation, because having discovered control of the strait — through which 20% of the world’s oil passes — is the only real leverage over the U.S, Iran is loath to give it up.

“The strait is basically the equivalent of an economic nuclear weapon that they’re trying to use against the world, and they’re bragging about it,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News.

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Any deal that ends with Iran even in partial control of the strait, or collecting tolls, or in any way threatening international shipping, is unacceptable, Rubio says. “They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use an international waterway and how much you have to pay them to use it.”

“This is not the Suez Canal, this is not the Panama Canal, these are international waters. And if that’s normalized, not only does that set a precedent in the Middle East, it sets a precedent all over the world.”

Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) is the Washington Examiner‘s senior writer on national security.