Why I Oppose the JCPOA

“As a former political hostage in Iran, I oppose the efforts to revive the current agreement as it stands. I will explain my reasoning and what I believe is the best path forward.”

The JCPOA, which has again been in the news in recent weeks, refers to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—also commonly known as the Iran deal. Efforts are underway in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, along with Germany). However, regardless of what the agreement is called, some strains have clearly developed. But this should not be surprising. As originally constructed, the JCPOA had many fatal flaws, and this is why former President Donald Trump had the wisdom to negate the deal. Originally crafted in 2015, the JCPOA itself is more of a contract than an actual treaty. The Obama administration knew the contract would not pass muster in the Senate as a treaty and thus used other avenues to implement it. As little support as the JCPOA had in Congress in 2015, it would have even less support today. As a former political hostage in Iran, I oppose the efforts to revive the current agreement as it stands. I will explain my reasoning and what I believe is the best path forward.

The Biden administration has decided the best course of action to address the nuclear issue with Iran is to try to prod Iran into rejoining the agreement along with the United States. President Joe Biden and his negotiators have supposedly offered vast sums of sanctions relief, the release of seized or frozen Iranian assets, and other concessions to persuade Iran to rejoin the deal. The Biden administration has literally reached the point of begging Iran to negotiate on this deal. This, unfortunately, projects weakness, and appeasement can only embolden Iran to press for more concessions and trade-offs just to agree to rejoin what is an outdated, deficient, and weak agreement.

This begs the question: What is the United States really getting out of this? The other participants, namely Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, are desperate to rejoin so that they can gain the economic “benefits” of being able to trade more freely with Iran. Europe swings left, and, in order to continue supporting the continent’s socialistic agenda, European nations need a continuous source of revenue. Russia and China simply disregard the sanctions imposed by the United States, while the Biden administration has apparently loosely enforced said sanctions, thus taking the bite out of them. For the United States, there is less to gain than to lose, especially in the arena of credibility.