The Long, Dark Shadow of the Iran Nuclear Deal

Excerpt below:

History is nothing if not ironic. Donald Trump left the Obama-negotiated Iran nuclear deal eight years ago, vowing a far better replacement. Today, even as the two nations have resumed hostilities after the collapse of the ceasefire, he remains open to negotiations that, if fulfilled, threaten to duplicate the 2015 accord. Meanwhile, supporters of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) trot out their counterfactual in which the deal magically solved Iran’s nuclear challenge and stabilized the Middle East—all while slamming Trump for trying to reprise the original agreement.

Such irony tends to bring things full circle. Tortuous negotiations, untenable agreements, recurrent conflicts, and Iranian intransigence are as familiar today as a decade ago. All of that owes much to how the JCPOA was negotiated and the world it brought about. So deep is the legacy of that agreement that two once-unimaginable wars in the past year have done more to reaffirm these patterns than disrupt them. In the absence of a volte-face, the JCPOA’s fallout will continue to define and confound attempts to solve the Iran problem. This will hold true whether the two sides return to full-scale war, secure a new nuclear deal, or settle back into some middling gray zone.

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