As Donald Trump threatens to escalate attacks on Iran, backs off amid claims that negotiations towards a new deal to end the war are going well, then backtracks on that, there remains a big unanswered question: Can he cut a better Iran nuclear deal than Obama did?
For months, Trump has been simultaneously proclaiming that the war he started against Iran more than 100 days ago is almost at end and boasting that he will end the war with a peace agreement with Tehran that does more to curb the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions than the 2015 nuclear agreement he pulled the U.S. out of during his first term.
During an interview with NBC News last week, he trashed his predecessor for offering “weak and ineffective leadership on behalf of the United States” and argued that Obama and others “allowed [Iran] to get away with murder.”
“That deal was tantamount to giving them a nuclear weapon. It was a horrible deal given by Barack Obama, and really penned by him,” Trump said “It was a horrible deal.”
His comments were just the latest in a series of examples of Trump trashing one of Obama’s signature foreign policy accomplishments and boasting that he could do better.
Late last month, he claimed on Truth Social that were he to strike a new nuclear agreement Iran it would be “a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon.”
And on Friday, a senior administration official involved with the ongoing talks between Iran and the U.S. in Islamabad said the tentative agreement announced by Pakistan’s prime minister “accomplishes the core objectives that the President United States set out for this mission and gets us in a very, very good place at the end of it,” including by lifting the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and having Iran allow maritime traffic to resume through the Strait of Hormuz.
The official said there could be a signing ceremony to mark the acceptance of the agreement within days — if Tehran’s senior leadership gets on board.
He added that the proposed deal includes an Iranian pledge not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons — something Trump has said Tehran had agreed to weeks ago.
There’s just one problem with that.
The Islamic Republic has always disavowed any interest in nuclear weapons, citing a 2010 religious opinion, or fatwa, issued by the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which stated that the use of such weapons is haram, or forbidden under Islam.
And in 2015, Iran entered into a multilateral agreement to dismantle much of its nascent nuclear weapons program.
Called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it wasn’t just between the U.S. and Iran.
It was hammered out over painstaking talks between Iran, the United States, Germany, and the other four permanent UN Security Council members: The UK, China Russia and France.
Iran accepted limits on its ability to enrich uranium and permitted regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency in exchange for sanctions relief.
And despite what Trump says, there was no “cash” involved — he’s confusing the sanctions relief with a separate payment the U.S. made to settle a decades-old dispute over weapons purchased by the pre-1979 government that were never delivered to Iran.
Trump says he can get a better deal, but it’s hard to see how what the plans leaked out by U.S. and Iranian sources are better than the JCPOA.
For one, the deal Trump keeps touting isn’t a real deal — it’s a 60-day extension of the ceasefire and a promise for more talks.
It says nothing about how Iran would give up the enriched nuclear materials it already has — that’s a tricky issue, which is why the Obama-era JCPOA was negotiated in part by Ernest Moniz — a real-life nuclear physicist who was Obama’s Energy Secretary.
The U.S. negotiators this time around? Trump’s longtime friend, real estate developer Steve Witkoff — and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
And by now, it’s hard to say what is even under discussion after Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that terms for a memorandum of understanding reported on by Iranian state media had “NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to” by negotiators.
Trump also claimed the Iranians are “very dishonorable people to deal with” and said “there is no such thing as dealing in good faith” with them.
So, can he make a better deal?
Right now, it’s not certain he can make any deal at all.
