Trump's withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear deal negotiated by President Obama is one of the most egregiously stupid things Trump did during his Presidency and made the current war almost inevitable!ajax18 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 08, 2023 10:22 pmBreitbart is reporting that Hamas has taken American hostages as well. I guess $6 billion palates of cash offered by Obama and again later by Biden hasn't appeased Iran much. Interesting that the Muslims never dared pull a stunt like this when Trump was in the Whitehouse. A military so strong that we never had to use it would have been nice but the people voted against that in favor of welfare spending. Congreswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib maintain that Israel started this by creating apartheid conditions for Palestinians. If any Hezbollah or Hamas militants need access to New York to harvest some Jewish hostages there, I doubt they'll have any trouble getting in nor will liberal Democrat Jews have any weapons to defend themselves.
Here's what's in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Trump abandoned and Biden is vying to restore
Biden has made restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal a top foreign policy goal.
Trump withdrew from the deal in May 2018, pushing tensions with Iran to historic heights.
[Emphasis added.]Trump controversially withdrew the US from the landmark pact in May 2018.
Subsequently, the Trump administration unsuccessfully sought to squeeze Iran into negotiating a more stringent version of the deal with harsh economic sanctions as part of a "maximum pressure" campaign. Trump's approach to the issue pushed tensions between Washington and Tehran to historic heights, and raised concerns that a new war was on the horizon in the Middle East.
Trump's unilateral decision to withdraw the US from the JCPOA in May 2018 was also promptly condemned by US allies, who have scrambled to find a diplomatic solution ever since.
Before Trump withdrew from the deal, Iran's breakout time to a nuclear weapon was roughly a year. But it's now closer to "just a few weeks," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in early December.
Critics of Trump say that his decision to abandon the pact unnecessarily sparked a global crisis and increased the prospect of war, while pushing Iran closer to developing a nuclear weapon.
Trump frequently described the deal as "terrible," and while the pact has many proponents, he is hardly alone in this view.
To understand the polarizing nature of this deal and the challenges Biden will face in vying to restore it, here's a quick breakdown of the historic pact and the debate surrounding it.
The Iran deal, explained
The six major powers involved in these negotiations with Iran were known as the P5+1, which stands for the United Nations security council's five permanent members (the US, France, the UK, China, and Russia) and Germany.
The deal came together after two years of intense discussions and aimed to restrict Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for lifting economic sanctions against Tehran.
As part of the deal, Iran agreed to reduce its number of centrifuges — tube-shaped machines that help enrich uranium — by two-thirds. It also agreed to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98% and limit uranium enrichment to 3.67%.
In other words, Tehran agreed to restrictions that would allow it to have enough enriched uranium to maintain the country's energy needs, without having the ability to build a nuclear bomb.
On top of this, Iran agreed to give access to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog agency, to its nuclear facilities, among other facilities. Prior to Trump's decision to withdraw from the deal and for a long period after, the IAEA repeatedly found Iran to be complying with the terms of the pact.
In January 2016, when the IAEA declared Iran was living up to its end of the bargain, all nuclear-related international sanctions against Iran were lifted.
In other words, Trump's withdrawal from the deal and adding harsher sanctions against Iran, had essentially the opposite of the intended effect.
