President Donald Trump on Friday defended the continued lack of a war-ending deal with Iran by once again rejecting the former nuclear deal struck by his predecessor and longtime political foe Barack Obama.
Trump said of Iran in an NBC News interview, “They’ve dealt with very weak and ineffective leadership on the part of the United States and others” and “that allowed them to get away with murder.”
He was asked why Iran was still delaying talks if it was so desperate to reach a deal, as Trump has been insisting.
When pressed, Trump said, “It takes a while…It should have been done a long time ago.”
He then brought up the Obama-era nuclear deal – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA – which Trump withdrew the US from in 2018 and never talked to again.
“That deal was tantamount to giving them nuclear weapons. It was a terrible deal given by Barack Obama and actually written by him,” Trump told NBC. “It was a terrible deal.”
This was hardly the first time Trump had scrapped the JCPOA, which was reached by an international coalition including the US in 2015.
“The deal we are making with Iran will be much better,” Trump wrote. satya social post On April 20, by adding a few minutes later Such a deal would come “relatively quickly”!
US President Donald Trump speaks to the press aboard Air Force One as it flies from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on June 5, 2026.
Saul Loeb AFP | getty images
it has become a avoid again and again Trump’s war with Iran, which he initially said would last four to six weeks, has stretched into a fourth month without any short-term peace deal, let alone a deal that would resolve Iran’s nuclear threat.
Trump often claims that if he had not pulled the US out of the JCPOA, Iran would have already acquired and used nuclear weapons.
But many national security experts Says the deal, although not perfect, succeeded in its main goals of halting Iran’s progress toward proliferation and enabling effective monitoring of Tehran’s nuclear activities.
And since Trump’s withdrawal, Iran has violated JCPOA nuclear limits, including increasing their uranium enrichment and rolling back some transparency measures established by the agreement.
Asked in an NBC interview why he did not renegotiate a better nuclear deal during his first term, Trump said, “These things take years to do.”
Trump also claimed to NBC that the JCPOA “should have ended a long time ago.” But many of its key provisions were permanent, while others were to last 15 or 20 years or more.
“I find it very difficult to say how we are currently better off,” Ernest Moniz, who was U.S. energy secretary when it was signed in 2015, told CNBC.
He said, “Maybe a rabbit will be pulled out of the hat. We all hope so. But right now, conditions certainly seem a lot less favorable than they were a decade ago.”
Here’s what you need to know about the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal:
JCPOA path
The United States has expressed concern since the 1970s that Iran might pursue a nuclear weapons program. A US intelligence report in 1995 said that the Islamic Republic was “aggressively pursuing” that capability and, with foreign help, could produce nuclear weapons by the end of the decade.
According to US assessments, in response to international pressure, Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. But concerns continued to grow, especially after the 2009 revelation of Iran’s Fordow nuclear enrichment facility, which was initially kept secret from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The US has imposed a variety of sanctions on Iran for decades as it seeks to influence Tehran and deter its adversarial behavior. Although those sanctions damaged Iran’s economy and slowed the regime’s nuclear development, they did not eliminate the threat perceived by the international community.
Part of that perception stemmed from Iran’s rapid construction of centrifuges in the 2000s, which are needed to produce fissile material that can be used in nuclear bombs.
“When the Bush administration took power, Iran had no centrifuges,” Obama said in 2015, but “by the time I took office, Iran had installed several thousand centrifuges, and showed no desire to slow down—or even stop—its program.”
In 2013, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China and Russia and Germany – known as the P5+1 – began negotiations with Iran, leading to the “Joint Action Plan”, an interim agreement that took effect in January 2014. After this, JCPOA was finalized in July 2015.
What was in JCPOA?
About 160 page agreement Many provisions were included. Broadly, it established limits on Iran’s nuclear program, and imposed new verification and inspection requirements in exchange for the conditional lifting of nuclear-related sanctions.
Parts of the agreement went into effect permanently, including some key transparency rules. Other provisions were eventually to expire – some after only 10 years.
Under the agreement, Iran was limited to about 660 pounds of uranium enriched to just 3.67% for 15 years. That enrichment level is typically used for commercial nuclear power reactors.
according to IAEA’s latest assessment In February, Iran’s total enriched uranium reserves through June 2025 were estimated at about 21,800 pounds. Of that total, more than 970 pounds were enriched to 60%. While uranium is considered “weapons grade” at 90% enrichment, it is usable as a nuclear explosive at the 60% mark.
The deal also included measures to reduce Iran’s installed centrifuges, prevent it from producing weapons-grade plutonium, and halt the development of nuclear infrastructure.
“The most important feature of the JCPOA was the extraordinary verification and transparency measures,” Moniz said.
“Unlike every other country in the world, (IAEA) inspectors would be required to provide access to a suspected secret site 24 days,” he explained. “This is a very significant novel constraint.”
Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, called the JCPOA’s monitoring regime “unique and critical” to its success.
“The JCPOA includes the most intrusive surveillance and inspection regime ever enacted,” Davenport told CNBC in an email. “The deal wasn’t perfect, but it was an effective, verifiable agreement. It got the job done.”
Alternative view on JCPOA
However, critics criticized the JCPOA. He accused Obama of rewarding Iran’s belligerence while not focusing on sunset provisions and other forms of Iranian aggression in the agreement, including its missile program and its support for terrorism.
The deal would “eliminate any remaining pressure to meet the requirements of the deal while using that cash to fuel its aggressive expansion throughout the Middle East,” then-Sen. Marco Rubio wrote in 2015 op-ed.
Trump claimed in his 2018 speech on JCPOA withdrawal, “If I let this deal stand, there will soon be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Everyone will want their weapons ready by the time Iran has them.”
However, according to some estimates, Iran’s “breakout time” – the time it takes to enrich enough material for a bomb – shrunk a lot In the years following the US withdrawal from the JCPOA.
JCPOA remained in effect even after America’s withdrawal from it. But as far as Moniz is concerned it’s “history.”
“It is not being followed by Iran, it is not being complied with, so for me a new agreement needs to be reached,” he said.
That new agreement has not yet emerged, despite periodic reports that the parties are close to an agreement and as Trump frequently hints that an agreement is on the way.
Meanwhile, some reports indicate that Trump’s determination to seek a stronger deal than Obama’s has led to some points in the talks being stuck, including whether Iran will get any kind of deal at all. monetary compensation.
“The utility of comparing any nuclear deal reached today to the JCPOA is limited,” Davenport told CNBC.
“A new agreement needs to grapple with greater uncertainty regarding Iran’s nuclear materials and technologies due to gaps in inspections and uncertainties created by US and Israeli bombings,” he said. “An effective agreement in 2026 will also have to grapple with the technological advances made by Iran following the collapse of the JCPOA and the growing political incentives to build weapons in Iran.”
Moniz said the Iranians “have always said they are committed to not having nuclear weapons… but certainly our attitude was ‘don’t trust and don’t verify’.”
“That’s really what the JCPOA was about,” he said. “President Trump has chosen the opposite set of strategic priorities, and so far they’re not working out very well.”
