US President Donald Trump is considering a “deal” with Iran that covers only its nuclear weapons program. Hmmm. That rings a faint bell somewhere in the distant past.
Back in 2015, the US, Europe, Russia, and China negotiated just such an agreement with Iran. What happened to that? Let’s try to remember: Someone called it “the worst deal in history,” and he canceled it. Now, who was that?
Don’t get ahead of me here.
If your answer to the question above—who canceled the 2015 accord—was “Trump,” you’re only partially right. Israel’s prime minister at the time played a huge role, putting his nation, his people, and his prestige behind a campaign to scuttle the accord, including a fateful visit to Washington.
The peak moment was the Israeli leader’s address to a joint meeting of Congress, blasting the US administration and the accord achieved after years of negotiations. It came after the accord was already completed, when no harsh words from Israel could have stopped it.
The main accomplishment of Israel’s public tantrum was to anger the sitting president and his entire political party. That was a president who signed off on $38 billion in military aid to Israel over a decade, but who somehow became public enemy No. 1 in Israel.
That president was Barack Obama. That party was the Democrats, many of whom still hold a grudge against Israel—a fact that is harming Israel and will do so for years to come. That prime minister was Benjamin Netanyahu.
Now Netanyahu is fighting another rear-guard action to persuade the United States to extend a potential nuclear accord into other spheres, especially limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for terrorist proxies on Israel’s borders. But imagine, for a moment, what might have happened if President Trump, despite Netanyahu’s urging, had not canceled the first agreement.
Give the gift of hope
We practice what we preach:
accurate, fearless journalism. But we can't do it alone.
- On the ground in Gaza, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and more
- Our program trained more than 100 journalists
- Calling out fake news and reporting real facts
- On the ground in Gaza, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and more
- Our program trained more than 100 journalists
- Calling out fake news and reporting real facts
Join us.
Support The Media Line. Save democracy.
This is “counterfactual history.” There’s no way of knowing what would actually have happened. One baseline fact, conveniently forgotten, is that the US government’s own watchdogs confirmed Iran was keeping the nuclear accord—but President Trump canceled it anyway.
The terms of the accord are public. It remains the most restrictive agreement I’ve ever seen when neither party was a winner or loser in a war. It was not perfect—no compromise agreement is, by definition—but it could have been a starting point for more.
Here’s one key provision: “For 15 years, Iran will not engage in producing or acquiring plutonium or uranium metals or their alloys, or conducting R&D on plutonium or uranium (or their alloys) metallurgy, or casting, forming, or machining plutonium or uranium metal.” The UN Security Council’s enforcement mandate would expire in 10 years.
The document ran for pages of specific restrictions. It also included provisions to “snap back” sanctions in the event of Iranian violations.
This was a 159-page document. Does anyone seriously believe it can be recreated in a better form in a few weeks of negotiations?
Remember: Iran was carrying out its part of the accord, according to President Trump’s own experts.
What if, instead of canceling the accord and then watching as Iran renewed its nuclear program, the US had gone back to the table after the 2015 signing and tried to restrict Iran’s ballistic missile program—and, through incentives and implied threats, made it unwise for Iran to keep funding and arming its terrorist proxies in the region?
Would it have worked? Who knows? But that would have meant the possibility of 10 years of negotiation instead of years of hostility leading up to the Iran-backed Hamas pogrom in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, igniting a war on multiple fronts.
Today’s situation, even after the pounding Iran took last year in the combined Israeli-US air campaign, is more dangerous than it was in 2015. The hobbled regime of the ayatollahs could lash out in desperation, possibly at Israel.
It’s unnerving that this is what many in Israel and the United States want. It’s not beyond the realm of plausibility that Netanyahu would press President Trump to launch another attack on Iran instead of recreating a “bad deal.”
That’s unnerving because nothing good or permanent would result from another round of fighting—just more deaths, more destruction, more hatred. Even if a US airstrike wipes out the whole class of ayatollahs now running Iran, its military would take over—the military, not the young demonstrators massacred in their thousands after President Trump’s promise that “help is on the way” fell through.
It’s likely the entire negotiation scene is an Iranian ploy to buy time and that Iran’s leaders have no real intention of signing another agreement with the United States.
Who could blame them? Look what happened last time. They made concessions, agreed to tough restrictions, agreed to an enforcement regimen, accepted a foreign inspection mechanism, and swallowed the possibility of a unilateral “snapback” of sanctions. For their trouble, they saw the accord unilaterally scrapped by the US president less than three years later. Now that same president wants to sign another “deal”? Why would Iran take that seriously?
That leaves us in an escalating, flammable situation. Those who want another war might get their wish. Those who fear such a war would produce nothing but pain, suffering, and destruction are likely to see their nightmare come true, too.
So it’s not out of place to speculate what might have been if President Trump, with Netanyahu’s cheerleading, had not canceled the original Iran nuclear accord. We could be in a better place today if the “deal” had been allowed to run its course.