A Reminder
By When Donald Trump came into office in 2017, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was in force, and working as expected/ hoped. It was a far better agreement than most of us wonks had expected or wished for. When its draft came out earlier, we were dancing in the streets. It was carefully done and extremely specific about limitations on Iran’s nuclear program.
And Iran was working to the plan. IAEA inspectors installed sensors that sent information on how enrichment was working to their computers. Numbers were being hit. Iran was working toward what the IAEA calls a “broader conclusion,” a certification that its nuclear program is peaceful. Collaborations were being forged between Iran and the nations that were involved in the negotiations. IIRC, China was working with Iran on reactor design to minimize plutonium production, for one example. There were other provisions to move toward more extensive agreements; the expectation was that interactions would continue.
But the JCPOA required regular certifications from the US president. And those regular signatures reminded Trump that it was Barack Obama who had negotiated this wildly successful agreement. That could not stand, and it didn’t. Trump withdrew. He had great faith in his negotiation skills combined with coercive measures that he loves.
The Biden administration tried to put things back together, but the loss of trust that Trump’s withdrawal produced was too much. And situations had changed, both in the US and in Iran.
Trump ordered his golfing buddy, Steve Witkoff, another great negotiator in his eyes, to put something like the JCPOA back in place. He didn’t use those words, of course, but that was what it amounted to. Reports from Witkoff’s negotiations seem to indicate they might have been converging on something a little less than the JCPOA.
The US JCPOA negotiating team consisted of something like 150 people, most of whom were experts in nuclear issues and sanctions. The national labs supplied experts. Witkoff showed up to meetings without even an interpreter, much less national lab experts.
This time around, Iran was more pressed to get an agreement, but even with that, the Great Negotiators failed. Throughout, Trump occasionally tweeted threats at Iran to encourage them to agree.
Bibi Netanyahu had other ideas, as we see. Like Putin, he sees Trump as a sucker. Like Putin, he has no interest in peace. As Trump sees his great triumph (and Nobel Prize) slipping away, he is panicking, as we see from his frequent postings over the last 24 hours. His earlier threats, along with his poor understanding of the situation and inability to think about anything but win-lose outcomes, put him in a bind Now he’s meeting with his crack foreign policy team.